TODAY: Time; Phone &Zoom Info; Proposed agenda for: 51st session ACIM/Raj/Awakening/Together meeting
Welcome to the fourth day of a new month, which will either be the threshold of, “Behold, I make all things new,” or the threshold of “Behold, I make all things new.” And the only difference between the two will exhibit what you are willing to embrace . . . or not!
How can it be otherwise if God is All, and “you are not God but God is all there is to you.” What exists that has the capacity to introduce an alternative?
No . . . not even a Son or Daughter of God!
We were created and have our existence because of the Movement of God—the Mind of God—for the Purpose of bearing witness to Him . . . to His ideas.
“In the beginning was the word.
And the word was with God.
And the word was God,”
Not you or me!
We are “the acknowledgment of Him,” not the declarations of ourselves. But—and this is the difficult thing to see—without free will, there is no such thing as “attention.”
The Course says that “your (our) attention is God’s treasure,” which means that God is not just infinite Mind being conscious of what It is conscious of! Being is not infinite, eternal narcissism. It is an infinite, eternal relationship between God and His Creation(s).
This, however, seems to suggest that Creation has the ability to reflect something other than That which is expressing It—a manifestation of dis-integration—which is, of course, impossible.
So, what does this mean? It means that when we arrive at the “first of the month” . . . or any “moment” . . . or any “holy instant” . . . it is our Function to recognize it as what it is by choice. It means that each moment is the wake-up call to that which is new. It means that opting for ten more minutes of “this moment,” will amount to ten minutes of increasing tension as That which is “all things new” continues—moment by moment—to be new!
However, even though one refuses to embrace and identify the “moment,” the “instant,” for What It is . . . even though he refuses to fulfill his Function . . . the refusal does not create anything at all, but simply distresses (distorts) the experience of What is Really going on . . . Creation!
The fact that it doesn’t create anything is the reason “Prayer is saying yes to God.” It is also the reason there seems to be good and bad, love and hate, sickness and health—all of the dichotomies of the “human condition”—when there is not And it is also the reason that there are instantaneous “healings.”
I put quotes around the word “healings” because the “replacement of a misperception” is the revealing, the uncovering of What is Really going on, and not the removal of something which is not.
The revealing always happens when there is a lapse of will, a momentary humility which is often experienced as “humiliation”—the giving up of arrogance—and it is never the result of an improved, more Christian, or more spiritual authority, but of someone “saying”—by means of the absence of any private, personal excellence—“yes to God.”
The experience of need is a perfect example of the distressed experience of Fulfillment—which is what the “making of all things new” is!
“Need,” is a mistaken interpretation, a misunderstanding, rather than something external to be dealt with. When one thinks that being a student of Truth provides him with better defense against the onslaught of “the human condition,” one’s misunderstanding misleads him, causing him to attempt to use Truth to free himself from what he sees instead of freeing himself from what he’s seeing with!
We never get beyond needs even though we “think” we can, because we cannot get beyond Fulfillment—the making of all things new—whether it is “seen clearly or through a glass darkly. If we believe we can, we are deluded, and this belief is the application of the stress of standing at odds with Creation instead of saying yes to It.
The grand learning is that it is not Creation which is released from the power of fear when you arrive at the point of humiliation or humility and say “yes.” It is you who is released from what caused you to see what is not and never was there—together with the dissonance (fear) which your misperception generated.
So, here we are at the 4th of the month, and what do we have? Needs that we haven’t risen above or forever Fulfillment which Wills to be recognized, acknowledged and embraced with joy and gratitude—the absence of an opinion which stands at odds with what is Really happening and “introduces”an absolutely absurd misperception of the Kingdom of Heaven as “the human condition to be overcome.”
It is ridiculous! And seeing its ridiculousness is what releases one from the bondage of such self-imposed illusion and ignorance.
Need is Fulfillment looked at through the wrong end of a telescope, causing what is meant to be seen “up close” as though it were further away than without a telescope at all!
And so, again, here we are at the 4th of the month with fulfillment, Wholeness . . . not refreshing Itself, but insisting upon being recognized. Well, not exactly “insisting upon being recognized,” but being the only thing there is to recognize!
The Gift of Brotherhood which arises out of saying yes to God, the experience of Love which one finds himself experiencing when he does not engage in the self-satisfying practice of private evaluation or judgment of a Brother or Sister, causes the joy of giving to wipe away all tears, establish Brotherhood instead of fear, and gratitude for the ceaseless disturbance of the status quo instead of the arrival at an imagined destination, an imagined conclusion to learning, where finally one isn’t having to say yes to God over and over and over again.
Thank God for the disturbance of Life—of never arriving at what you thought peace was . . . because what you thought it was is the rigor mortis of death.
Don’t require Reality to prove to you by being ceaseless Life—which your resistance cannot succeed at prevailing against—that the Will God placed in you to witness for Him instead of yourself is absolute and that It will prevail . . . illuminating the truth of the statement, “as in heaven, so on earth, God is omnipotent, supreme.”
Don’t require its eternal and therefore “unrelenting omnipotence” to mercilessly disclose the absolute impotence of your claim to independence, forcing you to re-member, re-join the Brotherhood, and unify as an experience what has always been one.
Wholeness needs not only to be embraced as possible, but actual, and it must be appropriately demanded by the unequivocal expectation of experiencing It instead of wallowing in self pity or becoming lethargic and passive. This is not the assertion of control, but the absence of a “control which holds in place the false impression that Reality is a human condition” which there is no alternative to.
Today there is significant need, practical need, need which will not be met by sacrifice, but by its opposite. And as is always the case at the first of the month, Paul, together with everyone on the Foundation’s mailing list has the opportunity to persist in not settling for justifications of lack or the imposition of further sacrifice . . . whether health-wise, or financially, or in any way.
I am refusing to speak in terms of dollars and cents because, although the needs are significant, the issue to be felt and learned about revolves around a shift of focus—from fear to love, from what one sees to what one is looking with, from earning one’s good to receiving it through grace, and to having because giving became one’s obvious Function and Brotherhood’s substance!
I love you, and I invite you to join me in giving because it is our Function—not just in this instance, but all the time with everyone.
Rajpur
Kingston, Washington
March 4th, 2021
For those who wish to make a contribution, you can do so via:
You can also mail your contribution to:
NWFFACIM
P.O. Box 1490
Kingston, WA 98346
An Imperative Question
Are you good enough to deserve your good? It is a very good question to take a look at—an imperative question to look at—but never a question to actually ask!
And an even more imperative question follows: Is your brother, is your sister, is your friend or even your enemy good enough to deserve the best you have to give? And this question must be asked and answered!
They are questions that matter! And they matter because your experience of Reality depends on them, and so do your brother’s and sister’s. Or, shall I put it more bluntly, less kindly, more meaningfully:
They matter because they determine
whether you experience the awful misery
of the “human condition”
or the miraculous, invulnerability
and harmony of divine being, and
of the Kingdom of Heaven,
which is the only thing
confronting you.
You are the Sons and Daughters of God. You are, as I said, experiencing Creation, Reality, the Kingdom of Heaven, either clearly or through a glass darkly. Each moment is the threshold of “Behold, I make all things new,” OR the threshold of “Behold, I make all things new.” And the only difference between the two will exhibit what you are willing to embrace . . . or not.
Now we are going to refine it a little further.
What is it that shades Reality, casting an ominous pall over everything which is perfectly beautiful when seen, “clear as a bell” in the fullness of Light? What makes That which is One appear to be two—not by creating a second, but by obscuring the only One there is—and inviting the imagination to misinterpret what is seen and call the misinterpretation real.
It is very simple.
In the vernacular it would be put this way: When two or more gathered together and decided to give their own definitions to everything, they “threw shade” on Creation, casting a pall upon It, but affecting It not at all—just their perception of It. And, as we’ve said before, two unexpected things arose—fear and guilt.
At first, the fear and guilt were a “thrill”—a challenge to be overcome; an invitation to use their free will . . . which they then determined was given to them by God to prove their excellence and thereby “live up to” His expectation . . . earn His acknowledgment of them . . . not realizing they were forfeiting their God-given Function of acknowledging Him.
Choosing not to own the fear and guilt as the “sensation” of being out of their Mind, they attributed it to what they were seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling and touching of the Kingdom of Heaven—what is called “projection” at this present time.
I will say it again in a different way: The “human condition”—sin, sickness and death—is today’s best experience of the Kingdom of Heaven when shade is thrown at it, and it is not sin, sickness and death which need to be overcome. It is the practice of “throwing shade.” And it is not “the world” or one’s fellow man who must do it. It is you!
What started out to be a mutual adventure in self-government—for the purpose of independent “greatness”—became competition with each other. And becoming equal with God—claiming one’s “inheritance” and fulfilling God’s reason for creating Sons and Daughters—became domination of each other—a constant battle for superiority.
Today it is called egotism, and it is this which each and every “mortal” must do the work it takes to not overcome but to abandon. And as difficult as that may seem, the fact is that it is easier to abandon what isn’t real than what is.
A Course in Miracles makes the demand on everyone who reads or studies it to stop “throwing shade,” to abandon the addiction to what amounts to nothing more than trying to change the Kingdom of Heaven into the Kingdom of Heaven instead of doing the “work” necessary to “undo the Fall,” to undo it by withdrawing from the mutual agreement with a Brother or Sister to stand at odds with the Father—to stand at odds with That which is the Integrity of their very existence—and thus stop “throwing shade.”
If your brother is not required to deserve his good before he can have it, then neither are you. Neither one of you has ever fallen from his high estate. Believing that you have and using each other to prove you are worthwhile is, itself, a state of misery which no one deserves and is unjustified, and when you let your brother off the hook, you let yourself off the hook, and you come Home together! That’s the way it works.
Evil is not real. It does not need to be overcome. You may be wearing the most fantastic pair of shades to cut the glare of Truth, Love and Soul, but Reality is just as “bright” as It has always been. And no matter how long it takes for you to realize that it was just you and a few friends “throwing shade,” and that there is nothing to change except the way you were choosing to look at everything, you will discover that just like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, all you had to do was click your heels together three times (take off your shades), say “there’s no place like Home,” and do it with a Brother (your fellow man).
And so, it is important to understand the role or Function of Gift—its place in and as the scheme of things. It’s more than a novel way of embodying Love “here on earth.” It’s the means of undoing the Fall! It’s the means of undoing mental conditioning which, like an accent, goes unnoticed by the one who has the accent.
The invitation to learn how to speak with an accent feels like putting an accent in place where there was none, when there actually was. And likewise, when I constantly speak about “the Foundation’s needs” in conjunction with Gift, it may sound like a new financial methodology is being promoted and put into place—a new way to talk about “transaction.” But I am not talking about transaction at all!
I am talking about caring. I am talking about involvement. I am talking about “having” without “getting.” I am talking about Love being reflected in love. I am talking about God being reflected in man. I am talking about heaven on earth. I am talking about two being One—not ever having been two! I am talking about behavior arising from actual intimacy with each other, not intimacy arising out of mutual agreements, protocols, good manners, or rules applied.
Being truly civilized is not something acquired or learned. It is something felt! Doing unto others as you would have them do unto you means being with humility, defenselessness—defenseless genuineness—without a trace of self-seeking or manipulation.
Being truly civilized is not an accent. It is not “good behavior.” It is being with another in a way that causes the other to like himself because your behavior is not a defense of yourself against him, and he can relax and be safe. Being truly civilized is not skillful manipulation, so smoothly done that the other doesn’t recognize that you are artfully protecting yourself against him. Indeed . . .
Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they shall see God
in their Brother’s eyes
and will not look there
for themselves!
There are needs which have prompted Paul to seriously listen, late last evening and early this morning, for what I might have to say. And this has been my response. Although “transaction” has never been part of our “work,” the current significant needs, coupled with his relative inactivity during the past four months has “thrown shade,” suggesting that the work we do does involve “transaction,” hidden in the modus operandi of Gift. Obviously “No Gift, No Get,” and he is fooling himself to think otherwise.”
In other words, “Has he been good enough or done well enough to deserve otherwise?” And he took the bait and asked the question! And he tried to answer it, himself! Then, last night, he decided to abandon his self-rightousness and asked to look at it with me. As a result, his learning is becoming your learning as well.
In the next 48 hours, approximately $4,000 will be needed to pay for utilities, taxes, two of seven unpaid paychecks, and other essential expenses which are overdue from three recent months.
If anyone wonders why he didn’t let this be known until the last minute, it is because we have an agreement—he and I—that he will not post anything that we haven’t done together. And he reminded himself, by his behavior and its consequences, that when he is being self-righteous, judgmental, feeling unfairly put upon and angry, he cannot hear me, even when he wants to . . . as well as when he refuses to.
To want to experience Guidance more than hearing only oneself is a prequisite to experiencing Guidance, and since our last conversation on the 4th, which we shared on the blog, that did not happen until now. I am grateful that it did, and he is, too. And I have been able to share with you some things which he was not willing to hear until now.
Not only am I inviting everyone’s continuing support, I thank all those who responded to our post on the 4th. Brotherhood is involvement, and it is continuing. Thank you again.
Rajpur
Kingston, Washington
March 8th, 2021
For those who wish to make a contribution, you can do so via:
NWFFACIM
P.O. Box 1490
Kingston, WA 98346
