“Each day should be devoted to miracles. The purpose of time is to enable you to learn how to use time constructively.” – ACIM
Be daring; let yourself be born again and do something you have never done before. Fast from negative thinking or habits that no longer serve you, breaking old habits.
SPRING CLEANING
It’s necessary to look at conflict so it can be resolved. Make A BIG LIST OF GRIEVANCES; people who irritate you and problems or situations that annoy you.
In your quiet time, make a BIG LIST OF GRIEVANCES. Don’t try to be spiritual or holy. Make a list, in your journal or on a piece of paper, all the things that upset you or make you angry or afraid. Look with OPEN EYES at any conflict that is in your life. RELEASING, PURIFICATION and CLEAN-UP, most times, can look like a TOXIC wasteland, a much bigger mess than you started with.
Write out a list of NAMES OF PEOPLE.
Write out a list of SITUATIONS.
Write down the feelings you experience: AFRAID … ANGRY … SAD …. FRUSTRATED
Then ask yourself, WHY DID I CAUSE THIS SITUATION? It’s an amazing day when you realize that you are the cause of everything that seems to happen to you.
What is my part in it?
What do I get out of it?
Are you willing to forgive yourself?
Are you willing to forgive others?
VERY IMPORTANT, MEGA IMPORTANT:
DO NOT – I REPEAT – DO NOT – POST THIS LIST ON-LINE. PLEASE DO NOT POST IT ANYWHERE. DO NOT SHOW IT TO ANYONE. DO NOT TALK ABOUT IT. DO NOT ANALYZE IT. JUST WRITE IT OUT.
This list for you and you alone. Your grievances and upsets have enough energy as it is, without you adding more energy to it by showing it to people or talking about it.
This work is about identifying THAT WHICH IS BLOCKING YOU and BEING WILLING TO LET IT GO. This work does not take years of therapy. It takes only one instant of willingness.
AND THAT IS ALL. We’re not going to analyze our hurts. We’re not going to attempt to fix them. We’re not going to feel guilty about the list. We’re not going to try to solve anything on the list. We are simply bringing our upsets into our awareness, front and center, where we can see them.
Bring these things into your awareness so that the LOVE THAT YOU ARE can heal them all perfectly.
In each of us is a memory of ALIVENESS, magnitude, grandeur, glory and grace. We know we are here to do something, which keeps calling to us, and we keep not doing it!
For the longest time, I would never look at problems or grievances. I tried to be spiritual and happy all the time. I would repeat sentences like “I have no problems"; "there is no world,” but I wasn’t in peace. I kept trying to push the conflict aside and just “be happy,” but I knew deep in my heart, I was missing some crucial piece of the puzzle.
Not looking at problems is actually the way to KEEP all those problems!
FORGIVENESS ENDS THE DREAM OF CONFLICT HERE -"Conflict must be resolved. It cannot be evaded, set aside, denied, disguised, seen somewhere else, called by another name, nor hidden by deceit of any kind, if it would be escaped. It must be seen exactly as it is, where it is thought to be, in the reality which has been given it, and with the purpose that the mind accorded it. For only then are its defenses lifted, and the truth can shine upon it as it disappears." L-333
The only way to really let problems go is to bring them into your awareness, into the light, and watch them change before your eyes. So we are going to look directly at conflict and problems with open eyes so that the light of our own forgiveness can shine it away! There is nothing to fear. Looking directly at your worst fear and walking directly into it would disappear!
When you are not fulfilling your function of living in love and creative expression (which is what You Are), you will find that every little thing annoys you and irritates you. Often people stay in jobs and relationships they don’t like, afraid to love, fearful of being creative and expressive. It often seems easier and more comfortable to keep playing small, than it does to step out of your comfort zone and start taking risks.
Playing small is INTOLERABLE to the Spirit of you, the reaction is to be pissed off at everyone and everything. You wonder where and how your life went wrong. All you see about you is closed doors, missed opportunities, drudgery, routine and same old, same old.
“Trials are but lessons which you failed to learn presented once again, so where you made a faulty choice before you now can make a better one, and thus escape all pain which what you chose before has brought to you.” – ACIM
So where before you might have attempted to solve or fix a problem “to get rid of it” now you can see that it is A LESSON that “you failed to learn presented again so where you made a faulty choice before you now can make a better one.” And once you make “the better choice” in this situation, it will dissolve forever. Otherwise, it will have to be presented once again in some other future time until you learn the lesson it came to teach.
“There is a deep responsibility you owe yourself, and one which you must learn to remember ALL the time. The lesson will seem hard at first, but you will learn to love it, when you realize that it is true, and constitutes a tribute to your power. You who have sought AND FOUND littleness, remember this: Every decision that you make stems from WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE, and represents the value that you PUT upon yourself. Believe the little can content you, and, by LIMITING yourself, you will NOT be satisfied. For your function is NOT little, and it is only by finding your function, and fulfilling it that you can ESCAPE from littleness. There is no doubt about what your function IS, for the Holy Spirit KNOWS what it is. There is no doubt about its magnitude, for it reaches you through Him, FROM Magnitude. You do not have to strive for it, because you HAVE it. All your striving must be directed AGAINST LITTLENESS, for it DOES require vigilance to protect your magnitude in this world. To hold your magnitude in perfect awareness, in a world of littleness, is a task the little cannot undertake. Yet it is asked of you, in tribute to your magnitude, and NOT your littleness. Nor is it asked of you alone.” –ACIM
When you have a sincere desire for your life to change and you say YES, YES to God, YES to a new way of living, the changes will come of themselves, you put things in motion.
You are being reborn; your past is deleted. You begin to allow yourself to BE SHOWN what to do next, where to go, what to say – with no reference to the past. My advice is DO NOT LEAVE SITUATIONS OR PEOPLE. Do not leave your job. LET EVERYTHING UNFOLD. Do not push things to happen. Just relax, trust, and everything lines up perfectly in a way you could never plan yourself.
Ask Christ to dissolve everything and everyone that is not part of the Divine Plan of your life – this includes sickness and addiction. Allow the Light of Christ to be in your awareness and imagine it dissolving everything that is a block or obstacle to fulfilling your God-given function in the world.
In the beginning, as you practice living in joy, finding out what you love to do that makes you happy (because your function is happiness), you might begin to experience things falling away.
Simply start living in ways that make you happy. Find out what you want to do and start doing it. Nothing is holding you back except your own judgments and grievances.
Now you may be wondering how to deal with these people in your life who push all your buttons, the people you have to live with that you can’t get away from. You’ve tried forgiveness and it doesn’t work. I know, I’ve been there.
With my family, there was a lot of conflict, with brief moments of joy. I would use ideas from A Course in Miracles thinking they would change into loving characters. But they didn’t change. In fact, things got worse. I woke up every morning thinking it was going to be a new day, but there was always more conflict. The main theme in my relationships was people pushing me away. At least that’s what it felt like to me – they kept me at a distance and I was always trying to figure out how to make things work. Then I had a revelation! Just stay in joy! Stay in my own space and be happy. Get out of the battleground! Don’t participate in it, not even a little! And that’s exactly what I did. I started finding my own joy, even while he was in the same room.
I started finding that space where God is. I looked at people with new eyes – as someone without a past to me, as a friend and brother in Christ, as someone I loved and appreciated.
Then it got even MORE uncomfortable. The happier I became, the angrier these people seemed to get. I kept standing in joy. I didn’t waver. I kept remembering God and I kept remembering not to participate in conflict (which can be difficult to do when it’s right in your face).
One of my very favorite lines in A Course in Miracles is this, and I use it daily:
I HAVE DONE THIS THING AND IT IS THIS I WOULD UNDO.
I kept taking 100% responsibility: I AM THE CAUSE OF THIS CONFLICT. I AM CAUSING IT, AND I DON’T WANT IT ANYMORE.
When you stand in consistent joy, the people around you will either:
1. change and join you where you are in that place of joy
OR
2. they’ll disappear entirely
Don’t participate in the conflict. Simply find ways to stay in joy. WHEN YOU CHANGE YOUR MIND, THE WORLD CHANGES WITH YOU.
“We have said that you cannot change your mind by changing your behavior, but we have also said, and many times before, that you CAN change your mind. When your mood tells you that you have willed wrongly, and this is so whenever you are not joyous, then KNOW this need not be
In every case you have thought wrongly about some Soul that God created, and are perceiving images your ego makes in a darkened glass. Think honestly what you have thought that God would NOT have thought, and what you have NOT thought that God would have you think. Search sincerely for what you have done and left undone accordingly. And then change your minds to THINK WITH GOD’S.” –ACIM
Change your mind to think with God’s. How lovely … How simple!
SEE RELATED POSTS:
From Failure to Success
Mindfulness Practice
Rewrite Your Story
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