I’m moving to New York.
That’s right. New York. Center of the universe.
With all it’s glamour and glitz:
Actually, I’m thrilled. I love New York. She’s my baby.
I leave next week. I don’t have a job yet and as usual: no plan and no money. But I do have a very beautiful place to live and that’s all set. The adventure continues…
If you would like to make a donation for my trip – for gas money and Starbucks to get from here to there, I would love it:
I am not a body. I am free.
For I am still as God created me.
(199) I am not a body. I am free.
The whole point of these past 20 review lessons – really, the whole point of A Course in Miracles – is to remember that YOU ARE NOT A BODY. YOU ARE FREE.
I’m getting the most amazing messages lately from YOU who are recognizing you are spirit and light. You’re now realizing that the body has nothing to do with anything. It is given to you do whatever needs to be done, and all sickness and limitation literally & physically disappears.
I started this blog 4 years ago – first because of my great need to learn this message for myself, and then after a time I continued to blog because such amazing things were happening to me that I wanted to offer that experience to others.
I wanted to shout it from a mountaintop that there is a solution.
I wanted the world to know.
In God all things are possible.
“The Lord of Love has come to me. I want to pass it on.”
PASS IT ON (it only takes a spark) – click here to listen
What you will begin to realize is that words have nothing – zero – to do with this process. Your body has nothing to do with this process. Finally, it’s all about action of mind. It’s one thing to say you are not a body, it’s a whole other ballgame to demonstrate it physically. It’s quite an adventure when you “take up your bed and walk” as Jesus instructed to the lame man. It’s quite an adventure when you learn you have wings to fly. It’s quite an adventure to see the world shift before your eyes, and to see sickness and problems disappear.
“What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Let your actions speak for you now. And be honest. It doesn’t do any good to run around saying (like an enlightened spiritual person) “I’m the light of the world. I’m so happy” when your actions show depression and a tired body.
This is not about make-pretend. It’s not about acting like you are awakened when you are confused, lonely and afraid. Awake means awake. Constant joy is your natural condition. CONSTANT JOY. Can you imagine such a state? Until that moment arrives, just keep practicing. Keep showing up. Listen to the audios. Write to me. Buy A Course in Miracles. Buy Gorgeous for God. Sign up for the classes. Have a little willingness. Change a routine. Change a habit. Keep pushing yourself past your boundaries. If you don’t know how to push yourself (or don’t have the strength for it), then let me push you. It’s what I’m here for.
I have no purpose here in the world except to help you find your way back to God. I’m here as a guide. I’m here shining a light.
If you need help, ask me. I’m here for you.
There is no need to wander about in darkness. The light is before you.
A Course in Miracles is about CONSISTENCY. It’s the reason I show up every day. It’s been given to me to learn consistency. What I can tell you is that it gets easier and easier as time goes by. The more you practice, the easier it gets.
At first, in the beginning, it appears to be the most difficult, most complicated thing in the world. But then all of a sudden, you see the path. It’s illuminated and you see exactly where you are going. Suddenly, you’re not stumbling anymore. Suddenly, you realize that you’re not alone and that Jesus is walking beside you.
I’ve got some blog readers here – you know who you are – who were in the darkest blackest fog when you first arrived. I remember the letters. There was a couple of times that I thought “here is a hopeless situation” and to my surprise and wonder you have bypassed me. You sprung straight into Heaven. The student bypasses the teacher and that’s an amazing thing. I love it when that happens. I rejoice to God Himself that you are here with me.
We journey together now. We are the Teachers of God. You heard the call.
God called and you answered. Thank you.
Today is the end of confusion as you still your mind and leave the earth a while and remember how much God loves you.
Say this to yourself:
“I am God’s Son. Be still, my mind, and think a moment upon this. I am God’s Son. And then return to earth, without confusion as to what my Father loves forever as His Son.”
That’s really all your need to remember. You are God’s Son. You are loved and lovable. You are safe. You are free.
You are not a body.
You are the light of the world.
I thank God for you.
I am not a body. I am free.
For I am still as God created me.
(198) Only my condemnation injures me.
The only thing that is really going on here (with the practice of A Course in Miracles) is that you are allowing the channel to God to be cleaned and purified.
When you arrived here on earth, you had a perfectly clean channel. Information flowed freely through it. It was open to receive revelation and communication from God. It wasn’t clogged with worldly laws and habits. With every new rule, that channel gets clogged. Even something as simple as “It’s a boy!” clogs up that channel. It categorizes you as a body. From that minute on, people have been defining you by your body characteristics based on religion, location where you live, values, morals, intelligence (or lack of), color of your skin, size of your body, and your achievements and failures.
Think about how clogged you are with ideas that people told you!
This is condemnation.
You condemn yourself based on lies!
This condemnation keeps the channel blocked and clogged with accumulation.
This is the reason you need to start letting go of your stories. This cleans out the pipes.
Like with a clogged pipe, you need to throw something powerful down there in order to UNCLOG THE CLOG. When your bathroom sink is clogged, you need to throw water down there, or use a plunger, or Drano or some other powerful substance. Ignoring it (or acting like it doesn’t exist) does not unclog the clog. Everyone knows this. You need to take action.
And so it is with you. You need to start unclogging your own pipes by thinking about God. You need to take action. You keep adding light to yourself. You let go of your stories one by one. This undoes the darkness. This unclogs the drain. You stop judging people. You stop making up stories that require forgiveness.
The vibration of the Word of God starts loosening the tangled mess.
You might say: I don’t know how to accomplish this. Well, I’ll tell you a story. Back when I was a teenager I used to swear all the time. One day when I was 19, my friend Mark said to me “Lisa, you are such a beautiful girl and when you swear it makes you ugly.”
The second I heard that, I stopped swearing forever.
That’s how simple this is! The minute someone showed me my behavior, I had within me the ability to stop it.
That’s how you stop judging. That’s how you stop condemning yourself. By realizing it makes you ugly. Stop telling your stories. Stop talking about other people. It’s making you ugly … and has nothing to do with the way God created you.
You have been telling lies. Let the past go. Let your stories go. Nobody did anything to you. Nothing has happened to you. You are whole and perfect as God created you.
Only your condemnation injures you.
It injures you! Your condemnation INJURES you. Why would you do that to yourself???
Why would your harm yourself?
Time to clean the pipes. Time to open that clogged channel so you can begin receiving revelation. Many people complain they can’t hear the Voice of God and that’s because their pipes are clogged with all the learning of the world.
Time to clean out the mess.
By J.K. Rowling
J.K. Rowling, author of the best-selling Harry Potter book series, delivers her Commencement Address to Harvard graduates of 2008: “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination.”
Copyright of JK Rowling, June 2008
President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates.
The first thing I would like to say is ‘thank you.’ Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I’ve experienced at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and fool myself into believing I am at the world’s best-educated Harry Potter convention.
Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can’t remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.
You see? If all you remember in years to come is the ‘gay wizard’ joke, I’ve still come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step towards personal improvement.
Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that has expired between that day and this.
I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called ‘real life’, I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.
These might seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.
Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.
I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that could never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension.
They had hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to study English Literature. A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents’ car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.
I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.
I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.
What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.
At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.
I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.
However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person’s idea of success, so high have you already flown academically.
Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.
Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.
So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.
Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.
The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.
Given a time machine or a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.
You might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.
One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working in the research department at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London.
There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.
Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to think independently of their government. Visitors to our office included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had been forced to leave behind.
I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.
And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just given him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country’s regime, his mother had been seized and executed.
Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.
Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard and read.
And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.
Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.
Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s minds, imagine themselves into other people’s places.
Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.
And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.
I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the willfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.
What is more, those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.
One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.
That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.
But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people’s lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world’s only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.
If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.
I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children’s godparents, the people to whom I’ve been able to turn in times of trouble, friends who have been kind enough not to sue me when I’ve used their names for Death Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.
So today, I can wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:
As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.
I wish you all very good lives.
Thank you very much.
by J.K. Rowling
I am not a body. I am free.
For I am still as God created me.
(197) It can be but my gratitude I earn.
I’m learning to give thanks to myself. No one else can do it for me. It’s interesting how most people spend their entire lives waiting – waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting – for external gratitude and acknowledgment for their efforts and achievements.
And then, if you have ever received external gratitude, you already know that it’s fleeting. And then you are back to waiting again for more external thanks. It never ends.
Then one fine day you realize that it is YOUR GRATITUDE that completes you and makes you happy.
This is what it means to be impeccable. You absolutely stop waiting for the world to confirm and acknowledge you. You start giving thanks to yourself.
And not just for the big things, but the tiniest things – like the way you eat a meal when you are by yourself. Or the way you brush your teeth.
You start doing things for the sake of achieving perfection for your own satisfaction. You let all your thoughts and actions be impeccable.
I am talking about everything, not just the big things. Because there is no difference between big and small. The way you tie your shoelaces is the way you do everything. Be impeccable. The way you remove a dish from the dinner table is the way you do everything. Do it impeccably. The way you write an email to a friend is actually the goal in itself. Most people write an email in order to receive a response, not realizing that the writing of the email is the goal/satisfaction/accomplishment in itself. Be impeccable.
When you begin operating in this way, you will find tremendous joy in every action.
Not a single other person has to acknowledge you ever again. Do everything for the sake of doing it well.
When you clean up one area of your life, all areas of your life clean up automatically.
Most people are sloppy with their actions, words and thoughts. I catch myself immediately when I am being careless. What does it mean to be sloppy and careless? It means to do things unconsciously, without full awareness that every single movement counts.
In the bible (Matthew 5:18) it says:
For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
What does this mean? It means you must cross all your t’s and dot all your i’s in your life. You must become perfect in every thought and action.
And this only means to be perfect as God judges, not as the world judges. You become impeccable. It means to do everything consciously.
You never fly off the bat in anger anymore. You no longer judge. You are aware of what you are doing before you are doing it. You begin to see things in advance. You begin to develop the ability to go out in front of an event. Yesterday I saw a trouble coming 4 hours before I even arrived at the place where it was to happen. I saw the whole scene in my mind, and I was told what to do to bypass it. This is what it means to be perfect. You start to listen. You begin to see things clearly. You know things in advance.
And because of this tremendous gift – you start giving thanks to yourself. You start lavishing over-the-top gratitude to yourself for a job well done.
And all the energy that you previously wasted in waiting for other people to acknowledge you (and give thanks) is still at your disposal to continue to do great things.
You start working with the energy. You become friends with this force of nature and it will absolutely guide you.
And once you begin to see this is a real happening – that your life really does begin to shift when you work in harmony with the forces of nature around you – you will be giving thanks all day long.
You’ll be overjoyed by things you used to take for granted – like the wind. You’ll realize that God has been giving to you all along – and yet you couldn’t see the gift that it really is because were blinded by the world. Suddenly, you become conscious of every little thing.
And you’ll be in a state of never-ending gratitude.
I am not a body. I am free.
For I am still as God created me.
(196) It can be but myself I crucify.
All that you do, you do unto yourself.
There is no one outside of you. There are no people. No one is doing anything to you. You are doing it to yourself.
Knowing this, why would you hurt yourself any longer? Why would you hold onto a grievance? Why would you be angry? Why would you hold attack thoughts in your mind? Why would you hurt your brother? Why would you judge or condemn once you know that you are only doing it to yourself.
You would stop attacking and crucifying instantly the moment you realized you were only doing it to yourself … and you would only love.
To do this is to speed yourself up. Like speeding up a car by pressing on the gas pedal. You start to travel faster. You start to vibrate faster. All the molecules in your body start to change. You affect the time factor. Miracles begin to happen, but then you are speeding along so fast that you start to bypass miracles. You just whiz right past them. They no longer matter. Miracles become children’s toys that bore you. Then you are in the space of creation, and you are moving faster than the speed of light. When you are moving that fast, there are no problems and no sickness.
It’s not even a miracle anymore. It’s just a natural process of what occurs when you change the speed at the rate at which you vibrate.
When you speed up the vibration, the physical world changes.
Think about water. At certain times it is ice, other times it is liquid, other times it is steam. At all times it still contains the properties of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen … but as it vibrates at different speeds it takes on different appearances.
And so it is with you. You can speed yourself up and this will change the appearance of your body, your life, and your world.
When you speed yourself up by thinking about God, all the garbage that has accumulated in your life (habits, fears, limitations) starts to dissolve. This is the undoing. The layers start falling away. You start to feel that you are no longer tangled in a web of confusion. Suddenly there is clarity and certainty.
The practice of A Course in Miracles will change you if you have a willingness to change. It will turn you upside-down, inside out, right-side up. It will restore to you the awareness of your wholeness and perfection.
Everything else that you made disintegrates and disappears forever … and all that is left is a fantastic magnificent light that belongs to you.
If you don’t want to change, then nothing in this world can help you.
But if you do want to change, then help is available but you are responsible for the speed in which it occurs.
I got lots of letters that you enjoyed the Teachings of Don Juan Matus. So here’s a link to read more:
I am not a body. I am free.
For I am still as God created me.
(195) Love is the way I walk in gratitude.
I don’t have consistent internet service anymore. I’m laughing. It’s like “one thing after another” for the past week. The whole shaky foundation of my life has crumbled and disappeared in a flash.
It’s awesome. I am seeing there is no sacrifice and nothing left to lose.
There is nothing left to lose because everything has been taken away … and I’m perfectly fine. All my life belongings are in the back of my car and the trunk of my car. This is astonishing to me.
My home is in God.
I live in God.
Love is the way I walk in gratitude.
“The Holy Spirit is my only Guide. He walks with me in love. And I give thanks to Him for showing me the way to go.”
“A ship is safe in the harbor but that’s not what a ship is for.” – Ralph N. Helverson
And a ship is even safer on dry land … but then what the hell would be the use of the ship??
A ship is meant to sail. And we are meant to fly. We are not here to keep ourselves limited, comfortable and safe. You are the light of the world.
I am the light of the world. Salvation of this world depends on me.
I have a function that God would have me fill.
Light does not sit still. It shines. It affects all things. It disrupts. It’s a force. It does not attempt to set up circumstances in which it feels safe. It doesn’t worry about where it lives. It doesn’t plan or organize or worry. Light doesn’t attack or defend or gossip. It’s not careful. It doesn’t wake up and think “okay, what should I do today??” It doesn’t try to protect itself. It doesn’t go to therapy groups. It doesn’t write down lists of grievances. It doesn’t forgive. It doesn’t need learning. It doesn’t hide in secret.
It does only what is was designed to do: to shine and shine forever.
You are perfectly safe.
You are not a body. You are free.
You are still as God created you.
Consider the lilies of the valley. They neither toil nor spin.
Look at these swans. They have everything they need. They don’t worry about anything, so why should I?? Why should you?
from Don Juan Matus (who was Carlos Castenada’s teacher):
There is one simple thing wrong with you — you think you have plenty of time. You think your life is going to last forever.
If you don’t think your life is going to last forever, what are you waiting for? Why the hesitation to change? You don’t have time for this display, you fool. This, whatever you’re doing now, may be your last act on the Earth. It may very well be your last battle. If this were your last battle on the Earth, I would say that you are an idiot. You are wasting your last act on the Earth in some stupid mood! You have no time, my friend, no time! None of us have time! Don’t just agree with me. Act upon it.
Happiness is to act with the full knowledge that there is no time; therefore, the acts have a peculiar power. Acts have power, especially when the person acting knows that those acts are his last battle.
There is a strange all-consuming happiness in acting with the full knowledge that whatever one is doing may very well be one’s last act on the Earth. I recommend that you reconsider your life and bring your acts into that light. You don’t have time, my friend! That is the misfortune of human beings. None of us have sufficient time. Your continuity just makes your a timid man. Your acts cannot possibly have the flair, the power, the compelling force of the acts performed by man who knows that he is fighting his last battle on the Earth. In other words, your continuity does not make you happy or powerful. Focus your attention on the link between you and your death, without remorse or sadness or worrying. Focus your attention on the fact you don’t have time and let your acts flow accordingly. Let each of your acts be your last battle on the Earth! Only under those conditions will your acts have their rightful power. Otherwise, they will be, for as long as you live, the acts of a timid man.
… You have to learn how to make yourself accessible to Power.
It is best to erase all personal history, because this makes us free from the encumbering thoughts of other people.
… You take yourself too seriously. You are too damn important in your own mind. That must be changed! You’re so damn important that you can afford to leave if things don’t go your way. You think that shows you “have character”. That’s nonsense! You’re weak and conceited!
Self-importance is another thing that must be dropped, just like personal history.
You think and talk too much. You must stop talking to yourself. In fact we maintain our world with our internal talk. Whenever we finish talking to ourselves the world is always as it should be. First of all, you must use your ears to take some of the burden from your eyes. We have been using our eyes to judge the world since the time we were born. We talk to others and to ourselves mainly about what we see. A warrior is aware of that and listens to the world. He listens to the sounds of the world. He is aware that the world will change as soon as he stops talking to himself and he must be prepared for that monumental jolt.
Personal power depends on impeccability. Impeccability consists in efforts to change, in order to scare the human form – and shake it away. After years of impeccability a moment will come when the form cannot stand it any longer and it leaves.
One can stalk his own weaknesses in the same way as a hunter stalks a prey. You figure out your routines until you know all the doing of your weaknesses.
When one has nothing to lose, one becomes courageous. We are timid only when there is something we can still cling to.
Self-importance is our greatest enemy.
Impeccability is nothing else but the proper use of energy. To understand this, you have to save enough energy yourself. Warriors take strategic inventories. They list everything they do. Then they decide which of those things can be changed in order to strengthen their energy. The strategic inventory covers only behavioral patterns that are not essential to our survival and well-being. Self-importance figures as the activity that consumes the greatest amount of energy. Actions of rechanneling that energy lead to impeccability.
You must push yourself beyond your limits, all the time.
I am not a body. I am free.
For I am still as God created me.
(194) I place the future in the Hands of God.
Some lessons really make me laugh out loud. I burst out laughing (and am still laughing!) when I read this one this morning. It’s so funny to me. I place the future in the Hands of God.
For those of you following along this blog, my life has been turned upside down this week. Or maybe it’s right-side up? I’m riding the wave. It’s not good or bad … it just is what it is. There’s no accidents. I’m on the adventure of a lifetime – trusting in the unknown and following Jesus.
He knows the way and I’m allowing myself to be led from one event to the next.
Just when it seemed like the dust was settling down, I was told (a few days ago) that I cannot continue living in this house. LOL. The universe has an intense sense of humor. Nothing bothers me anymore. I’m flowing like the wind. At first it seemed I had to go that day, but then with a little communication, I was told I could stay here for a week or two until I find something else. The woman who owns the house is truly beautiful. Thank the Lord. I realize that I don’t have to push or force my agenda anymore. I’m perfectly safe. I don’t have to manipulate or beg or control to get my way. I’m given everything I need for the day that I am in … and it’s sufficient.
All I have to do is trust and listen to the Holy Spirit speaking to me. He tells me where to go and what to do, and He’s taking care of me perfectly.
I place the future in the Hands of God.
What’s amazing to me is to realize that it’s no accident that I landed in this house. I have been having the most wonderful interactions with people that I never would have met otherwise. Also I found a book here called Mind of the Cells by Satprem (which is the words of Mother, who was the companion of Sri Aurobindo) and I can see that I landed here for a reason. All things are lessons God would have me learn. I don’t have to figure out the reason, but I got catapulted into this house for a divine purpose.
Maybe I’m only needed here for a week or two until I’m off on my next assignment. See the collapse of time? I go where God would have me go. I place the future in the Hands of God.
But I’m laughing anyways. These lessons are not concepts anymore to me. LOL. It’s not just mindless singsong that I say as repetitions in a book. The lessons have become absolutely true and alive. The only thing now to do is trust in God. I don’t have anything to hang on to anything … and all that is left to do is place the future in the Hands of God.
I love it.
Henry David Thoreau says: “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life one has imagined, one will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
Be fearless.
Trust.
I can’t formulate any goals past this day. It’s awesome. I’ve been forced into a present condition. I can’t even formulate an idea into the next hour. It’s really about being shown each and every moment what the next step is, and then allowing the Holy Spirit to take it for you.
I was ready for this and that’s why it’s happening. I wasn’t afraid to lose my life. You lose your life in order to gain it. A Course in Miracles is an undoing. You reach places in your life when it seems like things are taken away, but in reality you’re simply getting rid of all the tangled layers of your mind.
These lessons we are practicing now are:
I AM NOT A BODY.
I AM FREE.
FOR I AM STILL AS GOD CREATED ME.
“The past is gone; the future is not yet. Now am I freed from both. For what God gives can only be for good. And I accept but what He gives me as what belongs to me.”
Amazing, right? What God gives can only be for good. He loves you and He’s going to give you everything you need. Knowing this, what could you possibly be afraid of????
