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.
“Life is either resistance or surrender… Resistance is the decision to act alone. Surrender is the decision to act with God.”This is a very deep chapter for me. Those three sentences were to me the essence. Ruiz in his “Four Agreements” wrote that we are to have no expectations. In Interpretation, Ferrini explains why. Expectations really set us up for correction. Sooner or later our beliefs and emotions will be bruised by expectations not being met. This is a sign that we need to make a correction. Experiences are not there to meet our expectations. They are there to expand our awareness. When that is not happening to the fullest we will be given a jolt to make us aware that we need to correct. What we consider failure, error or disappointment are only jolts to lead us back to the path leading to the walk with God and away from the walk alone.Ferrini goes on about how we can talk our selves into anything. We can take the truth and invert it to believe we are right, that others are to blame, that the way has been shut off to us, but we are not changing the truth we are only successfully hiding it from ourselves. Every experience we are given is an opportunity for each of us to reject the illusion we have created and to embrace the truth.He ends by saying that there is no time table for our learning only that it is happening. It can not be forced or stopped. We only have to trust that it is happening and that the Divine Mind within us is working.Relating this chapter to my recent history I realize that it wasn’t until I stopped fighting the fact that the relationship with another had ended that I realized it still existed. The form had changed. We were no longer physically close which had caused many obstacles that neither of us seemed able at the time to cross, but the spiritual link still exists. I feel his closeness more than I did when he physically was within touch. I can now re-look at us and let the lessons he shows me that I need to learn appear from our time together and our time now through emails and a connection within. Nothing is loss; all is gain.
Two sentences come to mind that sum up this chapter: “Love your brother as you love yourself” and “Do onto others as you would have them do onto you.” Both well known and easily understood on one level but on a deeper level so hard to carry out because to do either I must first love myself. For how can I love or do onto another as I would like until I know what that is?It is becoming clear in this chapter that to forgive another is to clear the way for me to let go of all the trash and forgive myself. However I treat another, I treat myself. Every look at the brother is a look into my own reflection.So, how do I treat that brother and in the end treat myself? I bless him, en joy his time with me, realize that I am not here to fix him but only myself. If he asks for help, I let him work beside me but if he wishes to leave I wish him well. Let him go freely and while he stays treat him as an equal. Equality is not easy. It is easier to blame or put him on a pedestal. Equality means to accept what he freely gives and give what I am feel free to give without a sacrifice for either of us. In this world this is not an easy chapter. But then I am not reading this to stay a part of this world but to help bring about the world that is possible if I allow myself to think with my Higher Source or the Christ mind.
Practicing being aware of my feelings, digging out the roots and freeing up the soil. Truly realizing where my emotions are coming from and freeing others from the blame and realizing that it is my thoughts of the situations that keep me stuck where I am. They may not have "done me right" but I am doing myself in by not seeing that by not letting go I am keeping myself in limbo. Seeing my own involvement emotionally in what ever happen and forgiving myself for whatever is keeping me stuck so I can let it go. What is keeping me stuck? Is it that my dad told me that I would never be able to follow through and make good on anything? Does every time I have quit at something go back to this or does it go back further? Was the thought there before he said it? If it wasn't why did I believe it? If I follow through from the last chapter that we come to this earth with the thoughts that need to be healed and pick our parents to bring up and then enable us to heal those thoughts then my dad saying that was just the first situation to bring up a reason I was here to heal. My dad did not cause my thoughts. He gave me awareness of a healing that I need to do. If I did not already believe it I would not have been affected by it. He was only bringing up what I needed to heal... So no more blaming my dad for doing his purpose towards my healing. Whatever his behavior mirrored off from me to him was his to learn and not mine to blame. As for me, its taken me many years to realize that I need to start being aware that I have a thought that I will fail and that means I can not follow through. For me, a lesson to practice... follow through. Continue this blog, read on and in other areas of my life such as weight loss, exercise and creative work become aware when the thought comes that I might as well give in since I will fail anyways. To heal that thought by repeating the now mantra of many, "YES I CAN."
I've spent days rereading this chapter to be able to write something of value. This morning I wrote in my handwritten journal and feel ready. I have read and heard before that we are here to work through our wounds and heal. Reading today I focused in on the words and realized that the author is saying that those wounds were brought into this world by us to heal, not received here. We came into the families that we have, found the friends and enemies we have and lived our lives as we have because we need to bring up wounds that help us find the thoughts that we were born into this life with to heal. It makes more sense than being randomly born into a family and situations that give us pain and suffering or even joy. Why else do the people we find surrounding us bring up the same emotional issues that we feel were given by our parents? In my last relationship, I remember calling Bobby "Esther" because he reminded me of my mother. Of course he did, I needed to heal. With this deeper realization that it wasn't Esther I needed to heal from but that Esther was given to me as my mother because I already was born with these thoughts life takes on a whole new reason. Everything and everyone I have ever spent time with was given to me to learn my earthly lessons. Everything that has and will happen to me has a reason and that is to heal myself. We are blessed in relationships that when two or more meet they get to mirror off each other and learn from that experience. Blaming others when our response is negative is a waste of time. We are meant to take our lessons and let them take theirs. In other words, the thought did come first and the situations are given to return the thought to love or as God thinks. The author talks about judging and condemning others and that condemning only reinforces guilt and stands in the way of healing. I don't take this as a get out of jail free card. There are people who need to be put away from others for the safety of all. It's how we need to change our thoughts about these people. They are our brothers and sisters and it is their thoughts that are in need of change. Basically I see it as fear, anger, hate being their thoughts and it is their purpose to change those thoughts to forgiveness and love. We can jail them for their behavior while not condemning them as worthless. The thoughts they have are leading them to the decisions they make and if we reinforce those thoughts they will only deepen their own worthlessness. The change has to be to get through to them and have them see that they are worthy. We are what we believe. Our purpose in helping our brothers is to respond by seeing them as our brothers and helping them undo their errors. "To be right make right." Not by preaching right to them but by treating them right and showing them by our thoughts that all matter. We have created God in our image and that image is one of fear, anger, judgment... Our purpose here is to return to God and once again see that we are created in God's image and that is one of love. God never abandoned us, we have looked away and created without him. Our reason to be here now is to return to God and create with God not apart on our own. Moving on to the next Chapter with a deeper understanding of where I am going...
Love Without Conditions by Paul Ferrini is in his own words "Reflections of the Christ Mind." It was given to me by my friend, Bob, the man I wrote about in my karma post. He gave this to me back in 1999 with these words written on the back of the front cover. "Vicki... Most answers are in the heart... May this book provide keys to unlock many doors. Bob '99" I am going to read and and blog my thoughts per chapter in the hopes that I will unlock doors for myself and help provide keys for some others. Introduction: The intro alone could be a mini book. The last sentence: "No one on earth has a better answer for you than the one you will find through trust in yourself and in me." Responsibility for our thoughts and therefore our world is our own. What we believe we make so the origin of the thought is either of Holy Spirit/ Christ (or whatever name/ word works for you) or ego/ world. We are asked in this chapter to choose our thoughts wisely and if uncertain as to what to think to bring to Him our dilemma and give it to Him to answer. Only when asked will He answer which to me gives a clear message that most of the thoughts that wonder in and out of my head are not from the spirit side of my mind. Most of the time I trying to decide to listen or not as they bombard my space. I can already see that to "be clear in your own mind" will take many trips to the spiritual communication phone. "Mistakes are opportunities for learning." This is as true for me as it is for everyone else. Everyone has the right to learn and make their own mistakes. I am here to correct mine not yours, nor to judge you as I am not mistake free and my judgment is only a combination of what I have perceived and therefore colored by others and myself. I do not know what is best for you. I only know what has worked, has not worked or might work according to my thoughts which may or may not help you. I'm leaving this chapter with the desire to rid myself of my "unhelpful thoughts." I will do this by opening my communication with the Holy Spirit within myself that was given me for my Being. I beleive we can help each other since the truth is the truth always. With the help of what we have been offered by Christ we can find that truth not by molding our own using His words but by giving Him all beliefs we have learned and letting Him recycle them back and hearing Him.
There is now a waiting list at the Nest's outdoor cafe. It was a bit of cabin fever that drove me out one morning to purchase this feeder and seed. Waited days for a guest and then he brought the family including friends. Now there are all sorts of visitors. We are all, human and bird, peacefully awaiting spring.
This first solo hibernation has given me time to read, test my ability to get the most out of my stuff- recently watched "The Secret Life of Bees" via my computer onto my HDTV- and get to know myself better.
I'm deep into reading Paul Ferrini's "Love without Conditions." For all the study I have done on self, rereading this book at this time is opening my awareness. I can now say that there are many pockets within to open and spill the contents. I also can say that when asked to think of those I still have to forgive I came up blank. I have let go of blame. I and others have not always done the possible best but we have done the best we could at the moment. My challenge now is to better-up my moments. I do know where to go to find the best I can be. I have my Higher Source within to ask. In every instance, I only have to choose.
