There is an entire self-help industry and a multitude of spiritual programs and techniques designed to help you “get rid” of your anger. They are all based on the faulty premise that you can escape what is. You cannot escape what is. That is impossible. If anger is arising, that is what is arising. Any movement to escape it or get rid of it is a denial of what is arising. It is resistance. When you resist what is happening, you merely strengthen it.

Instead of seeking to get rid of anger, simply notice it. Notice that it arises in a space of non-dual awareness. That space is who you are. The anger is merely a temporary energy movement arising and falling in that space.

Notice the mental stories that feed the anger and the strategies the mind uses to escape it. Let those stories and strategies come and go naturally and effortlessly in the space. This non-dual awareness has no agenda to escape or resist the anger. Spacious awareness is simply present to the anger, exactly as it is.

When there is no longer resistance to anger, it is no longer being fed. It disappears back into awareness. Stated another way, nothing appears as everything. So, in this case, nothing (awareness) appears as something (anger) and will effortlessly die back into awareness (nothing) if it is not resisted.

From: Reflections of the One Life, by Scott Kiloby www.kiloby.com

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The goods of God, which are beyond all measure, can only be contained in an empty and solitary heart. St. John of the Cross

I am thinking of St. John of the Cross, one of the greatest of Christian mystics, alone in prison in Toledo, Spain in 1578, unjustly condemned. He is weak from illness, hungry, suffering from frostbite. His cell, about nine feet by five, had previously been a lavatory for an adjoining guest room and has only a tiny hole, high up in the wall, to give light. His bed is a board on the floor with two old blankets. Clothed only in the tunic of his habit and with only his breviary to read, he is feeling profoundly alone. He knows not how long he will be incarcerated. Perhaps he will die there. I imagine him visited by the demons of hopelessness and despair, of anger and hurt. Another dark night of his soul. Living mostly on only bread and water, subjected to public lashings, for the first six months he hasn’t been allowed to wash or change his clothes.

Most of us have not been in such dire circumstances, but perhaps we can imagine his condition.

Yet St. John of the Cross, embracing his aloneness, facing his abandonment by the world, stumbled yet again upon God. God who is nothing, God who is No-thing, God who is totally Other yet more ourselves than our blood – this Mystery he discovers again, now, alive within the very centre of his soul. Stripped of everything he finds that, wonder upon wonder, he is not stripped of God. Emptied of all he had come to rely on, deprived of contact with his friends, he again finds his cup overflowing. These prison walls do not contain him. This moment is a gift from God, a blessing from his innermost nature. Being here is being in just the right place for now. Gratitude flows.

During this period of imprisonment St. John of the Cross wrote some of the greatest lyric stanzas in Spanish literature, among them a major portion of The Spiritual Canticle.

What happened next? In August of 1578 St. John of the Cross made a dramatic escape from the prison.

He went on to write The Dark Night of the Soul and The Ascent of Mount Carmel.

Warm regards,
Richard

I don’t think we really value our Source until we discover how desperately in need we are of our Source and Centre and Resource. (Interview with Douglas Harding, His Life and Philosophy, DVD.)

Please send your comments to Richard

This production is gifted to The Foundation for Holy Spirit: http://forholyspirit.org/ by Donna Marble.

?

This question was posed to me recently and I think it is very relevant to some of what we’ve been talking about here in the forum:

From the questioner:

“How can you talk about no self and also give relative descriptions from within a story in your answers?”

From Scott

Great question! …..because this is all we have….stories. All descriptions are relative. No one has ever expressed the truth or non-duality. All that we can do is point.

The moment we begin speaking, we are speaking within a dualistic language. No self has no meaning except in relation to self. So one has to know and experience “self” for the words “no self” to resonate as an insight. In that way, the words “no self” are just as dualistic as any other words. They appear to point to an absolute truth, but do they really?

No self is basically a story that goes like this: “I once thought of myself as a separate self, but through a particular recognition, I now know that there is no separate self.”

That’s fine. A very important insight actually!!

But do you see how each word refers to other words? How do we know anything called non-duality without reference to duality, for example?

All words exist in a pair of opposites. And language is this finite web of symbols. No matter how we rearrange them, and no matter whether our arrangement is labeled traditional advaita, neo-advaita, zen, taoism, direct path, indirect path, christian mysticism or fuddy duddy, the arrangment still falls within dualistic language. In seeing this, we can stop pretending.

We can stop pretending that non-duality is like a big club and once you have a powerful experience, you are in the club. As a member of the club, suddenly you are speaking “the truth.”

Is anyone speaking as awareness? Is awareness some detached, transcendental cloud of nothingness, and once you recognize the nothingness, all words you speak are truth? No, that’s just another story. If nothingness is anything at all, it is everything. It is every voice–from the uncompromising nondualist to the unclear, compromising dualist. All equal appearances of nothing. This isn’t bad news. It’s great news, because we can stop pretending. Stop fighting. Stop believing that language is delivering truth and “my truth is better than your truth.” It’s like a child saying, “na na na na na, my dad can beat up your dad.”

You see, I once thought that I didn’t exist. And I walked around believing that. It was the best story ever. And I met others who claimed they didn’t exist. And so we picked at each other, often pointing the finger at each other, deciding who existed less…who was less of a self…who was more absent. But this was just another ego game. The game of who can be more humble, more non-dual, is just another aspect of the ego game. But because one can walk around saying “I’m a member of the non-dual club,” somehow I thought I had a free pass to act arrogant, to think of myself as special, to think that I was expressing truth.

And in the fog of that ego crap, I missed the fact that my brother, the Christian, was also the truth. I missed the fact that the guy whose non-dual expression I hated the most was also the truth. I missed the fact that scientists, philosophers, and atheiests were the truth, that the guy down the road who has no interest whatsoever in seeing that he doesn’t exist is the truth, that the quaker, the baker, and the candlestick maker are also truth. Every story is truth. What else do we have on earth but our stories?

In trying to claim the truth by believing that I didn’t exist and therefore that I was the truth, or that I stood for or spoke from pure awareness, I created a point of reference against those pesky others who “still believed in separation” or “who weren’t speaking the truth as I was speaking it.” It was the biggest ego trip of all. The story that tried to one-up all other stories.

And something clicked in seeing that. I began to be able to talk about my personal experience again. I began to talk about Scott. I began to be able to share more about my own messups, my own boxing of shadows, my own silly little feelings of jealousy, frustration, and self-centeredness. I didn’t do this as a part of a game of trying to be the most humble, which is another ego trip. I did it because I wanted out of the club of the truth. The truth began to feel like the dogness of Oneness, like a little room that felt very small with no room to move, to breathe, to be human, to enjoy stories again.

So now I enjoy stories. And everything is a story to me. The greatest non-dual pointers are seen as just more stories. But I love them all. It’s just that I don’t consider them truth. They are helpful, yes, but not the truth. And none of these words are the truth either. So there is no one who transcends being “no self” or transcends “non-duality” either, which would just be another ego trip.

In this freedom, I no longer feel like I’m betraying the club to speak in relative terms. All terms are relative. Is truth real? Yes, but I don’t own it. I can’t have it to the exclusion of others. And so truth is everywhere I turn, in every question and answer, in every self and no self, every choice and no choice, in every person, group, nation, political view. They are all me. I am them. And that is a view that just has more room. It feels freer with nothing to defend and nothing to own. No conflict. Just love.

So it is very easy, as you can see, to use relative dualistic terms to point. All the insights that I’ve had along the way are empty. They feel just like any other thought. Yet, they are all relevant in their own right. They are relevant because the word relevant points to the word RELAtive. They all have their place, but none of them sits on top of the mountain of truth as the last and final word on truth. In this view, everything is allowed and loved.

Some words are clearer than others, but only relatively speaking. What is clear to me might feel like total mud to you.

You see, my friend Bruce has no interest in non-duality, so the words “no self” are not clear to him. They are meaningless. And my other friend who just experienced an awakening this week finds the word “no self” to be irrelevant also. He sees it as a great insight, but in the end…just more words. And there is a guy I met from my website recently who believes that “no self” is the last and final truth. But it’s just the truth for him, right now, at this moment. I know a dear friend and teacher who experiences what he calls “Unique Self.” It’s not ego. It’s the sense that no matter how clearly we recognized our real identity as timeless awareness, and it truly IS, there is still an individual expression with individual talents and skills. No one ever transcends these individual talents and skills. So for my friend, “no self” is true in that ego can be seen through, but so is “Unique Self.” There is nothing final about any thought or insight. There is no final club that we join.

This mess I’ve written here may seem like a bunch of contradictions. To someone it may appear that way. To someone else, all of this may be really clear. It’s all relative in that sense. What is clear depends on where you sit in your perspective, and every perspective is relative, even the guy who claims that he is looking from the ultimate perspective. There is really is no such thing. There is no special club. If I had to put words to it, I would say there is only love and we either embrace that or we turn away from it in each moment.

Much love

Scott

A reader I’ll call “P” writes: “I’d say a straight reading of the course says the Father created multiple Sons. Whether these Sons somehow share mind, or created with minds, again is speculative. I’m inclined now to believe mind is shared.”

Since I try to stick to what can actually be known, I usually think of the whole “other” concept this way. I can believe that other minds, people, things exist outside my awareness of those things but I can’t know that they do. There is certainly plenty of evidence that there is something “out there.” I have no memory of writing the songs, books, television programs, etc that appear in “my world” but that evidence does not prove the source of that stuff is what I think it is. I don’t know what the source of anything I don’t recall making or doing is — and not really even that. So letting go of the belief that I DO know turns the world into a very different place.

What was formerly “Oh that’s just this or that …” Becomes “Wow! What is this and where did THAT come from?” It’s like being a child — looking at clouds for instance –having never been taught what a “cloud” is. Everything becomes extraordinarily interesting when I don’t presume to already know what it is and what it means.

As the Course says “come empty.” The way *I* see that however, is NOT the “anti-intellectualism” so often touted these days. It’s just a reversal of where thought comes from — or seems to come from. I often wonder why so many Course students seem to think the Holy Spirit can use just about anything except intellect. Actually, I don’t wonder. Seems to me if you can convince people the intellect is useless or bad, you can lead them like sheep to the slaughter. The difference — seems to me — in what the Course calls “Right mindedness” and “wrong mindedness” is in whether the intellect is used to serve an already established belief system or not. In my book, “I don’t know” is the door to right minded thinking. Not to replace old beliefs with new beliefs, but to let go of belief altogether and see what is AS it is.

Quite honestly, I don’t think A Course in Miracles can be understood any other way. But for it to be more than just another intellectual exercise it has to be used. One of the things I love most about it is that it does NOT claim to put absolute truth into words. In fact, it SAYS the text is a “theoretical foundation” and the workbook “need not be believed or even accepted.” It SAYS “this is only a beginning.”

And yet, I hear Course students all the time saying “this forgiveness process will take lifetimes upon lifetimes.” Really? If the forgiveness process will take lifetimes upon lifetimes and is only a beginning we should be in for an interesting ride here.

P: “Since minds are naturally in communication, separation would indicate a mind which has limited or eliminated communication.”

Yes, the question is “Why would the mind chose to limit itself.” I think the Course clearly gives us that answer. We did/do it for fun but then we forget. We CAN however remember any time we choose to do so. All that is needed is a willingness to let go of attachment to outcome.

P: “I couldn’t care less if someone says, “I am God.” What I object to is someone saying the course teaches “I am God,” if one just reads the text as metaphor and inserts their own beliefs or claims to direct knowledge.”

Well, I think the Course DOES say “I am the Savior of the world” and “You are the kingdom of God.“ That only becomes a problem — as I said — when it is taken personally to mean ‘Deborah is the savior of the world” when, in fact, Deborah is nothing more than a character appearing in the world.

But I think I understand what you mean about caring only when people claim their own beliefs are “what the Course teaches.” I don’t care who says “God didn’t create the universe” or “when the son of god wakes up the universe disappears” either. But I do care when they say that is what the Course teaches, when clearly it is not. *I* happen to think that is a rather mindless way of using the Course to answer the age-old question “How could a good God create such an evil world?” I don’t presume to know that IS where that interpretation comes from but it is about the only reasonable answer *I* have heard to why the Course is interpreted that way. To me, the Course becomes a very inconsistent and “crazy” thought system when it is used to prove “this is a kill-or-be-killed world where we can’t even breathe without attacking God.”

When I first began to converse with other Course students I spent quite a lot of time asking “Why does the Course say God is in everything I see” when what it really means is “God is in nothing I see?” And “Why does the Course say ‘God loves the world’ — in fact — ‘loves the world so much that He gave it to His Only Begotten Son’ when what it really means is “God isn’t even aware of the world.”

The ONLY answer I got to those questions was “it’s a different world” — usually a world that cannot be seen with the body’s eyes, making the “the real world” one that excludes anything and everything said to be “physical” and in so doing makes “the real world” as isolated and private as “the world ego made.“

That is also the answer I always got to why does the Course say God created the universe and the earth. “That’s a different universe — a spiritual universe. The Course itself, however, does NOT say that. It certainly speaks of two worlds — the world you see and the real or forgiven world. But it never speaks of two universes or two earths.

P: “If God gives life and creates it would seem to me awareness of being alive and existing would be a natural part of that gift.”

I‘m not convinced that God creates life. That He extends life and in so doing expands it, I have no doubt. But that life can be created, I’m not sure. The forms in which life appears I would say are created. But Life — I think — is just another word FOR God.

P: “I think souls are microcosms of God. I also think souls are created perfect but must learn to co-create with the Father and learn from their mis-creations.”

I think the Course says souls are not in need of healing, having never forgotten that separation isn‘t real. Only the mind needs healing. I will add, however, that having the word “soul“ returned to the Course in the urtext version was — for me — like opening a thousand windows. As was the return of the word “fact.”

P: “The way I understand it is spirit/soul is perfected God-mind. It projects, thinks, creates mind so that the soul creates and can experience through mind what it creates.”

I can’t really say for sure that there even is a thing called “mind” but can understand how the thought of a mind can be helpful in articulating where thought comes from and even more so in communicating the contrast between “right“ use of thought and “wrong“ use of thought. But apart from that I tend to agree with what you say here. Which is actually why I can‘t buy into the “God didn‘t create the physical universe, but only a spiritual universe.” I don‘t know how to tell what is “physical“ and what is “spiritual“ EXCEPT that what is called physical is changeable, what is called spiritual is not changeable but DOES expand through creation.

As the Course says ‘You can’t see the Holy Spirit but you can see his effects and unless you do you will not know that He is here.”

I CAN see the difference in “the world you see” — which is always private and can only be “shared” verbally and “the real world” — which is universally shared. But I can’t see a “spiritual universe.” Of course, people often tell me that’s because I am not as “spiritually advanced” as they are.

P: “Self is identification. In true creation identification with one’s creation is a good thing. This extends the Kingdom.”

Yes. Identification with the totality of what appears or is created in any given moment not with any specific part.

P: “In other words, the entire projected universe/world is a false creation and thus a false self. Not just the body and the sense, “I am so and so,” or “I am Deborah.” The entire dream is self and the ego self, not just the body and the immediate ego identity.”

This is where we disagree. I don‘t see the universe as false creation. “God IS the universe.” The false creation is belief in thoughts ABOUT the universe — what it is, what it means and what it is for, which to my way of thinking the Course calls “the world you see.”

P: “Are there real separate “I” in this scenario? Or other “I”’s simply dream figures? Again, I inclined to think multiple Sons of God are participating in the same dream.”

I don‘t know whether they are or are not. I only know that IF they are, I can only know them in relation to myself. So I might just as well forget the question entirely and focus on that relationship.

“The miracle perceives everything as it is. If nothing but the truth exists (and this is really a redundant statement because what is not true cannot exist) right-minded seeing cannot see anything but perfection. We have said many times that only what God creates, or what man creates with the same will, has any real existence. This, then, is all the innocent can see.”
From A Course In Miracles, Ch 3, Sec IV Miracles as Accurate Perception par 2
God is in everything I see.

In a way, it is really the fear of death. Yes, our survival is often tied into jobs, relationships, money, virtually anything that is form. And survival is the survival of the “me.” So in a deeper sense it is all about identity, and “who I am.” Until there is a recognition of awareness as our real identity, we tend to look to thought for a sense of self. Jobs, relationships, money are experienced as thoughts. “I feel secure because I’m bringing home a paycheck.” “I’m scared because I just lost my job.” “What will I do if the economy crashes?” “I will be lost if my wife leaves me.” It is normal to believe that these thoughts are pointing to an objective reality. But these are first and foremost thoughts. Nothing more than images coming and going in awareness. They are not pointing to a reality beyond themselves. It is only by thinking the thought, “The future will be bleak” that creates the sense that the future will be bleak. Outside of that thought, there is no future and no “bleak.” This doesn’t mean that we don’t take practical steps like saving money, showing up for work and looking for a job when we lose a job. But when these steps are divorced from the psychological fear of future, they happen very easily, without worry or fear. Life lives itself.

Start noticing the script as it runs in your head. Notice the ways in which thought projects outward into future, creating scenarios of fear, threat, loss, suffering, sickness, and even death. This is the movement of the separate self, projecting outward into a dream of time. It’s thought. As long as you have a future, you have a separate self sense. And future is always thought. And thought is always an appearance occurring in present awareness, never outside of it. In that sense, there is no future. No one has ever touched anything called future except as a thought happening now.

What would it be like to have no future in a psychological sense? I mean to have no expectations. To know nothing about what is going to happen. That is freedom—freedom to live fully now. It’s quite natural actually because in fact we don’t know what is going to happen. All we have are thoughts that play various scenarios basically alternating between scripts involving hope (“The future will be better”) and fear (“The future will be worse”). In this invitation to start noticing the script, notice that whatever sees these thoughts as they appear IS already awareness. Awareness is already whole and complete. Awareness is outside stories of time, past, future, threat, survival, etc. That awareness is what you are. It is the only “thing” that does not come and go. It is untouched by these stories. It is like the opening through which the stories come and go.

By just making it a priority to notice that you are this awareness in all situations, regardless of whether you find the mind telling a good or bad story, this awareness is seen to have all the stability you are seeking. Do you see that the mind is seeking stability when these future stories are appearing? The self wants to know it will be ok. But there really is no stability in this future story. It is very shaky and always under threat. The mere thought of losing a job tends to shake one’s entire identity. This is because this thought-based self is not our real identity. Nothing real can be threatened. This is why it is important to recognize that your identity is awareness. This provides the stability you are seeking and provides a great capacity to handle anything from job loss, to sickness, suffering and even death of the physical body. This takes time out of the picture as this menacing force that always feels like it is haunting you.

Scott

I have seen 360 degree shots before, but nothing like this.

Look all the way up and all the way down and you don’t get

any decrease in the shot.

You can’t even see where the camera equipment is, it’s like

it’s not even there. Use your mouse to move around.

It takes practice.  ENJOY ! ! !

http://www.utah3d.net/index.html

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