Extreme Veteran
Posts: 386
 
Location: Gresham, Oregon, USA |
Today: Saturday morning: 8:30 AM PT (Pacific Time) USA
PLEASE NOTE: If you participate, this is YOUR meeting, every bit as much as everyone else who participates! We want what YOU bring to EVERYONE'S Awakening!!!
FYI: I email a copy of this to whoever requests it, whether participating in the meeting or not. Reply to this message. We will find a way to put you on the email list.
We are following Raj's guidance to accept Awakening, together.
YOU are invited!!!
We sure would Love to have your participation!
I Love you,
William
Go online to: Zoom.us ........super easy to get started.
Or: Join the meeting by PHONE (no video), call: 346-248-7799 or 669-900-9128.
Then, join the meeting:
Meeting ID: 872 9311 4948
PASSWORD: 334068
We will discover the format and agenda together.
I propose that we study and act on these messages from Raj:
ACIM Study Group With Raj
December 19, 2009
Good evening. And welcome to everyone who’s joining us on the Internet.
Well, it’s slightly less than a week until “my birthday.” It’s a time when it’s very easy to abandon the holy instant because of course, when you celebrate “my birthday,” you’re celebrating something in the past with no compensation, if I may put it that way.
What I mean by that is, that ordinarily, you don’t celebrate the birthdays of the dead. Ordinarily, you celebrate the birthdays of those who are alive. And what do you do? You spend your time with him or with her enjoying that one’s presence, having fun with that one.
And so, you don’t abandon the instant in which the holiness of it all can be experienced, whether you actually take advantage of it or not.
I’m going to ask you this year, on my birthday, for you to make a point of being with me. You know, next Friday, be with me in the present, by asking things of me, by reaching out to me and by listening for my response. Next Friday . . . you know, in the “now” at that time, so that you have, on my birthday, an experience of the living me, my presence and my availability to you—not as a Godhead but as your Brother, as a friend.
And I hope that while you’re with family or whoever you’re celebrating Christmas with, that while you are being with them, you will make a point of just addressing me with a remark here or there—just a conscious moment of your extending yourself to me. And I want you to know, that every time you do that, I will respond whether you hear it or not.
I will also tell you that by virtue of doing it, you are more likely to hear me, than if you don’t do it at all. Because then you will be occupied with, you know, the turkey or the gifts or the family or the music, or whatever it might be.
Now, we have a new section here called, True Empathy. And before we go on to what true empathy is, I want to take a little bit more time to talk about what it isn’t …..but what you believe it is and what you use it for.
Empathy, as you think of it, is a way for you to be present with a Brother or a Sister, a friend, to be intimately present with them, where, in so many words, you feel what they feel or you try to feel for what they are feeling without any blocks in the way—you try to let down obstructions.
But as long as you are behaving as though you’re an orphan and are therefore in a constant state of vulnerability, every single act of empathy that you engage in will, at the bottom line, be able to be traced back to self-protection, to securing safety in what otherwise is a hostile environment—a hostile world, a hostile universe, a polarized existence.
Very often your practice of empathy is engaged in, so that you will not be caught off guard by your “untrustworthy” Brothers’ behavior. And so you will be sensitive, especially to the Brothers or Sisters who seem to be the least trustworthy, whose behavior tends to show that they’re likely to behave in unloving ways.
When you make a point of expressing empathy toward a Brother in a helpful, non-self-protective manner, and you really have their best interests at heart, you will find that what makes it reasonable for you to do this is that that one provides you with something meaningful. And if you’re not able to be empathetic, if you’re not able to be present with that one well, you may lose whatever that one provides that has meaning for you.
And so if you have a loved one who is suffering from something, you will tend to help them because you love them, but also because if something happened to them and they were no longer around, you would be at a loss that you don’t want to have to cope with. And so it behooves you to be empathetic, it behooves you to be sensitive to that one so as to be able to help them still be around and fulfill your needs.
Now, I realize that you may feel that what I’m expressing is rather harsh and unreasonable, but you know what? It’s important for you to know, that when you think you are doing something good—ultimately good in some way or another—and you are not actually doing something ultimately good …..somebody needs to tell you.
Now, I am not telling you that when you behave from your orphan mentality, even though it’s with well-intentioned empathy, that you are not doing something good. When I tell you that, I also tell you what you can do and what you need to do in order to, for lack of better words, express empathy that is good and that does have benefit. And that’s what we’ve been discussing for a couple of weeks.
Empathy as you currently use it from your orphan mentality is always manipulative and always has at its bottom line, righteousness. You do it to demonstrate your capacity to be right.
Now, you say that you do it so that you can be on top of things—so that you can respond well. Well, if you’ve done that, you say: “I did it right.” If you behave in a way and it doesn’t turn out well, you feel: “I did it wrong.”
Empathy is something more than a means of expressing and achieving rightness. Empathy has nothing to do with being right. But being right is important to all of you. There’s a saying: “Right is might!” as though right is strength. But that very statement is an intellectual conclusion arrived at through thinking. It’s not Divine insight. It’s not you knowing the Truth. And because it’s not you knowing the Truth, and is the result of an intellectual process, the statement can be reversed. And it is reversed, and it says: “Might is right!” And so whoever has the “might” to assert and conquer or control is by virtue of the expression of “might,” right!” You see?
Right is not might. And might is not right. Oh-h . . .
Empathy does not help you be appropriate in your blindness, in spite of your blindness. Empathy is what uncovers your Vision—uncovers the fact, reveals the fact that you are not blind. And you know what? It accomplishes it through a state of intimacy.
As we’ve said, in the practice of the holy instant, you step back, you shut up and you ask of the Father, you abandon your privateness, and you ask of Something else than yourself and your best judgments: “What is the truth here? How do You see my Brother? How do You see my Sister? How do You see that tree? How do You see this world, what is the Truth about it?” And then you listen . . . and you let it be revealed, you let the Father speak or you let the Holy Spirit speak or you let me speak.
That is a moment of intimacy. It is a moment of connection. It is a moment of union.
Now, true empathy is Knowing. Knowing with a capital “K.” That’s True empathy. How do you arrive at an experience of Knowing? You arrive at it by abandoning your attempts to be right. You experience it as a result of abandoning your need and your attempts to control. You accomplish it by abandoning your privacy.
Now I cannot make this clear enough, and unfortunately, I cannot paint the picture black enough to make you want to spontaneously abandon it. But everything you do, absolutely anything you do privately as a result of your own thoughts going on in your, “you say,” in your own head, without involvement with anyone else …..any activity that you engage in privately, deprives you of your sanity. It deprives you of your fulfillment because it keeps you securely in the state of orphanhood.
Now that means it keeps you in a state of illusion because you aren’t an orphan and you did not create yourself.
As long as you use empathy to establish righteousness so that you might be something in your own right, or you might say, “in your own rightness,” you are using your mind in a way that absolutely inhibits any experience of intimacy because you’re not letting anything else in to be with you or for you to be with.
Now, another way you use empathy is to sometimes connect with God. You want to have empathy with God. You want to feel what God feels. But here’s the flaw in it: You ask God for a favor. You ask God for help in this situation or that situation. And so it is as though you send a message out and you don’t know whether He receives it or not, and then, if something happens in your experience that resolves the problem, you say: “Oh, God heard my prayer and God answered my prayer.”
But where’s the moment when God picked up the phone and you heard Him say “Hello” and you could say “hello” back to him? It didn’t happen. But if He had said “Hello” and you said “hello,” empathy would have occurred. You see?
You would have been in a position to feel God’s Meaning. And God would have been in a position for you to experience His Meaning. And there would have been joy. You see? It’s similar to what I’m asking you to do next Friday: Have a direct Real experience with me on this birthday of mine, that you’re celebrating by being absent from the moment you’re in (in which you could connect with me) because your attention is on a day two thousand years ago.
…..to be continued (next Wednesday?)
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TODAY IS FULL OF WONDER
~~Rajpur~~
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Dear Ms. …………..,
Thank you for giving us the additional time. We have examined all of the options, and today we met with Ms. ……………, a real estate broker, to put the Cliffside property on the market. Her phone number is ………….. and her email address is …………, and she said that you are welcome to contact her at any time if you have any questions.
I am told that it will take from two to four days to gather all the information together to create the listing, and as soon as I have the documentation, I will forward it to you.
She estimates that it will take approximately two weeks or less to prepare the property for showing, and that with the market as tight as it is, and the demand as great as it is, it will move within weeks, if not days.
We will be very grateful to retire this loan and repay the kindness our Benefactor showed to us by his support.
I will keep you informed.
Sincerely,
Paul Tuttle
Exec. Director
NWFFACIM
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Dear friends,
The above response was delivered yesterday in compliance with the demand letter which was received, and which I shared with everyone in the post entitled “The Future is an Assumption.”
But before I comment on that, I must thank everyone who responded to yesterday’s post! Your support kept the telephone service from being disconnected! Support is still needed, however, since a significant amount of past-due bills are awaiting payment. Thank you!
Now, putting the Foundation’s home of twenty years up for sale, resulting in today’s letter to the attorney, has put everything in a state of change, of flux, of fluidity—inescapably in the movement of Creation, but which can easily be misinterpreted as a movement of disintegration or destruction. After all, when one is involuntarily thrown into “behold, I make all things new,” when really new isn’t expected or wanted, it can be quite disturbing . . . and it has been for all concerned.
But the fact is that this is where the mental discipline comes into play—where one must behave in all ways new—which means abandoning the attempt to hold God to one’s personal opinion of “what Truth is” and “how things work”. . . or ought to.
It is the time to be utterly curious . . . not to see how disastrous what “really new” might be . . . but how miraculous really new IS!
Four people stand on the edge of what looks like displacement and insecurity when stability would be expected “at this time of life”—you know . . . when a certain degree of maturity has been “achieved”? But, no! Maturity is reflected in refusing to be offended by the disturbance of REALLY new, or the “inconvenience” of it, and demanding to see nothing less than the miracle of it! Which means: refusing to exercise your “right” to object and remain committed to your preferences.
So, this is where Paul, Susan, Chris and Judy are, whether they like it or not. And the learning isn’t to LIKE what they don’t like, but to stop having their opinion, so they may look with innocent eyes and see differently!
One has to be willing to say: “I don’t like what I’m seeing here, and I don’t like the meanings I’m applying to it. Help me stop! You see? Instead of saying: “Make IT stop,” you say: “Help ME stop!” And then you humbly sit in the void—the absence of the “old and familiar” AND the absence of seeing “the really new,” until the “new” registers with you. And whatever lag there is simply amounts to how long you take to let go of your righteous indignation at being put in that position! In other words, how long it takes you to let yourself settle down.
Everyone is learning that Being is a movement, not a stable, concrete, dependable, NEVER really new experience!
Again: BEING IS NOT A STABLE, CONCRETE, DEPENDABLE, NEVER REALLY NEW EXPERIENCE.
Without being empathetic, take the time to put yourself in Paul, Susan’s, Chris’ and Judy’s shoes, because it will help you understand that A Course in Miracles is not the practice of magic thoughts, but of behavior which is consistent with Truth—embodying Truth instead of principles or rules. Principles and rules are for those who have yet to FEEL Truth, and practice truths instead. And the Atonement is that shift from head to heart.
It is time to shift from the words on the pages of A Course in Miracles to the nitty-gritty pages of your daily life, read with your Soul instead of your intellect, which can best be described as your recognizing your needs in another’s and another’s needs in yours, and in that felt union of humble regard and mutual need which it is clear to you deserves to be met, your behavior changes . . . toward your brother and yourself!
There will be more to share. Today is literally the edge of God knows what, and there is profound curiosity!
I love you all.
Rajpur
Kingston, Washington
June 11th, 2021
~~oOo~~
For those who wish to make a contribution, you can do so via:
Paypal (or PayPal.me )
Zelle App (iOS, Android)
Or donate via our website
You can also mail your contribution to:
NWFFACIM
P.O. Box 1490
Kingston, WA 98346
~~oOo~~
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Today: Saturday morning; PHONE & Zoom info; Brief session ACIM/Raj/Awaken/Together video meeting
