DO YOU REALLY THINK THERE IS A DIFFERENCE?

I am completely awestruck by the polarization in this country. I have not been exposed to this much hatred of people in 68 years of life. I am confused and saddened by what’s going on in our world. Anyone out there feeling the same?

In my yoga class this morning with Bryan Kest, he stated something that I have been studying for the past 30 years. What he said was the world we see around us is an external picture of our internal condition whether it’s our relationships, the environment, our yoga practice and yes even politics. What he said confirmed for me that I was on the right path with this blog. I have a small audience, but I am committed to discussing relevant issues that expose the truth and assist us all in awakening from this dream.

What originally triggered my interest was an article sent by a friend interested in my viewpoint, I think because it was written by someone in my profession. The story was posted on an online “tabloid paper” that considers themselves center-left politically. The article was written by a cognitive neuroscientist freelance writer. The title of the article was extremely provocative and inflammatory and after reading it I decided to fact check it against the articles that the author stated he was pulling evidence-based information from. I have been researching this for the last three days and after going down numerous rabbit holes I have finally decided to start writing. In the art of not taking political sides and being non-controversial, I have decided to take this from a spiritual standpoint and rise above the battleground because this is the only place to be. For anyone that is interested in this controversial article you are welcome to contact me, and I would be happy to send you the link to the article so that you can read it yourself. The article was presenting a viewpoint against Trump and his supporters backing it up with old research that lacked a significant subject base to provide valid statistics. Nonetheless, this is not what really bothers me about this article or any article that comes across the internet, newspaper, magazine, email, or social media. What really bothers me is the lack of insight, forethought, compassion, as well as the ethical and moral responsibility of the journalist or teachers to the reader. Everyone has an opinion I get it.  But don’t we all have an ethical and moral duty to each other and to our country to present information that does not inflame, defame or agitate a political party, a country, or a race to such a degree that they express verbal and physical violence towards each other.  People seem to be taking hard and fast stands against each other as of late and they are not fact checking. Furthermore, people taking things into their own hands and acting out against their brothers and sisters in violent ways.  We have become very reactionary and not mindful of what may harm another.  We have differences but differences do not mean that we rise up in violence against each other. Yes, we are all different, but this requires a deeper understanding of each other’s differences with kindness, compassion and forgiveness.

This country has an internal war going on and we are all responsible for this dilemma. People are not feeling safe, they are anxious, fearful, buying guns, isolating in their homes, families are falling apart, there is marital unrest with an increase in divorce and an increase in physical abuse. What are we all going to do about his tragic problem that keeps getting bigger and bigger due to the overwhelming access and dependence on the media to provide us with information?  Where is the unbiased, unpolarized view, the responsible reporting that is morally and ethically driven? Everyone here has an agenda to promote, everyone lies, and they have a stake in swaying you. Don’t believe everything you hear or see we must begin to question the stories in our minds. We have lost our way and we must get back to what is God driven. The only way is through compassion, acceptance, forgiveness and love. I know that may sound overwhelming but isn’t that what we all want?

IT MAY BE WHAT WE ALL WANT BUT ARE WE READY FOR WHAT IT TAKES?

Believe it or not, healing is frightening to many. In fact, so frightening that the healing we want the most becomes so entrenched in our minds that we actually begin to suffer more because we cannot let our stories go. What a dilemma right? To think that the very thing we want the most healing, is something that truly frightens us must strike a deep chord in all. A Course In Miracles states, “Accusation is a bar to love, and damaged bodies are accusers. They stand firmly in the way of trust and peace, proclaiming that the frail can have no trust and that the damaged have not grounds for peace. Who has been injured by his brother, and could love and trust him still?” This strikes us at our very core, the unhealed self, the self-loathing part that we all have and protect and deny that we have and instead we project it into the world proclaiming that I am the innocent victim of this dream and you are the villain or victimizer! What we all fail to realize is that we play both parts in the story, we are both victim and victimizer depending on the scene. The Course states, “Corrective learning always begins with the awakening of spirit and the turning away from the belief in physical sight.” Just that short statement brings up a lot of fear in all of us because we are afraid of what our spiritual sight will show us. Fear of healing comes from an unwillingness to accept unconditionally that healing is actually necessary. What our physical eyes see is not real and error cannot be corrected by anything outside of us. Furthermore, as long as we believe that what we see is the truth all attempts at healing will be misdirected. Our vision will forever be obscured by our blurred sight. My mentor Dr. Kenneth Wapnick would say we need to get out the Windex and clean our mirrors, he had the best sense of humor always breaking up a serious conversation.

“Projection makes perception”, a statement right out of the Course and everyone seems to quote it, but I am not sure they really understand what it means. Yet they all use it liberally when they want to make a point to another person. The statement literally means whatever we see in the world we gave to it all of the meaning that it has to us nothing more and nothing less. Furthermore, to each and everyone one of us it has a great deal of importance. It is the internal witness of our minds. It is the part that gives meaning to all things and all of our stories. It clearly is the outside picture of our internal condition. I have mentioned this all previously in my other blogs. For instance, if you are fearful, self-loathing, hateful and have negative thoughts then this will be what you see outside of you and in every experience. This also reminds me of a quote by James Allen “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he”. In 1902 this writer/philosopher of self-help books published, “As a Man Thinketh” where he described the power of thought having a direct relation to our life’s journey. In other words, we are where our thoughts take us at any point in time. The Course takes this even further by asking us to see that our thoughts influence our perception. What we see when we look into the world is actually through our own filter, which we place over our lens and that is what we see, it is our own frame of reference and that picture belongs to us and no one else. In the Course’s words, we are being asked to not change the outside world or the picture that we see, instead change your mind about the world. “Perception is a result and not a cause.” Suffering is our judgement of ourselves and as long as we suffer, we will project that suffering into the world. If we see the world as damned, then we are all damned. The world that is being portrayed in the media looks disastrous, and even catastrophic. Did it ever occur to anyone that we are all responsible for contributing to this disaster by going around judging our brothers and sisters? Is this the world we want? Is this the internal world you want for yourself?

The secret to our salvation is very simply put, we are doing this to ourselves. No matter what we see, no matter what form the attack takes verbal, physical or sexual this is still true. Whoever takes the role victim/innocence or attacker/victimizer it is still the same truth. The cause and pain of our suffering lies within our minds, and this is where the correction needs to be. The Course states the following very powerful statement, you would not react to figures in a dream if you knew that you were dreaming. “Let your dreams be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they could have no effect on you unless you failed to recognize it is your dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering whatever form it takes.” We must bring this all to God or Buddha or our inner guru and this is the simple truth and shine away the darkness. It is for us to understand this simple statement that a miracle reflects, “I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo.”

I have been using the following excerpt from the Introduction to A Course in Miracles since I began this journey and I will share it with you now. It has been with me through cancer, divorce, illness and the death of my beloved son.

This is a course in miracles. It is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary. Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time. The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence, which is your natural inheritance. The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite.

This course can therefore be summed up very simply in this way:

Nothing real can be threatened.

Nothing unreal exists.

Herein lies the peace of God.