Choose Again

like a shark that needs to keep swimming to live

What you know of as yourself—that part of you that is conscious—believes that nothing can happen unless it does something. Unless it is moving (thinking, seeking, processing, being busy with one doing or another) it does not perceive itself as existing.

The truth is that only when this mind stops moving/thinking/seeking, or when attention is, for even a moment, taken completely off this moving mind, that that which is the source of the moving mind can come into awareness.

More accurately, it doesn't move into awareness, because it has never not been here, but it is available to knowing because the disturbances of the moving mind have momentarily ceased. It is not available to the mind we think of as "me."

Basically it comes down to trust. "I need do nothing," as ACIM maintains, is directed at the ego...the moving, seeking, shark mind. This mind will never find. But getting it through your head that there is actually something completely outside the parameters of what can be experienced, thought of and perceived by "me," which will not cause you to lose anything, is a leap of faith. And yet "I" cannot make this leap. "I" simply have to stop. The mechanics of the leap have nothing to do with "me."

You really do have to get to the point where you realize that "me" is a completely closed system. It will never come up with anything new. You can't take it along.

the news can only be good

I'm not sure it is helpful to talk about "awakened" vs. "not-awakened." If someone claims to be awakened, the reflexive response of the listener is to feel (perhaps only secretly) that they themselves are not, have not, will never have. And then they begin to vibrate in those terms and call to themselves more of the same sense of lack and despair and seeking behavior—completely overlooking the hopefulness of the message, if there is any. Awakening, as a process, means that you are noticing something that has always been happening, the workings of which were previously obscured in your attention. This noticing doesn't make you special. It makes you fully, happily, ordinary.

The message of non-dual teachings and of A Course in Miracles is that you can choose to stop focusing your mind on what you believe you do not have, in order to discover what you are. This is tricky. The best way to have more of a sense of fulfillment in your life is to come fully into the present moment and be here without complaint. This is the meaning of forgiveness. When you drop your complaint against what is, and against what you are, you learn that What Is has never had a complaint against you. This is the Atonement. Such good news.

When I speak of what is, I'm talking about this, right here, right now. Not something else. This ordinary, motley reality. This meat-puppet fixer-upper.

You cannot come fully into the present moment and also be complaining about what you think you do not have, or blaming someone for what you think they have done. And when you bring your attention into this litany of complaint that is the ego, or the false self, the wanter who lacks—you vibrate in such a way that you bring into your experience more of that. Wherever you place your attention... that's what you get more of.

When you hold a grievance against what is right here, right now—when you resist it, you literally betray yourself. You punish yourself. Your attention is directed to what is seemingly lacking. As you focus your attention, so do you experience. There's nothing mystical about it.

There is nothing you need to do, in particular, but there is something you can stop doing. You can stop focusing on the litany of complaint, the litany of fear. Just stop there and say, "okay—so be it."

You do this by just becoming aware of it. "Ah—there's the litany of complaint again, my old friend. Okay, I'll allow that to exist, but I won't give voice to it, I won't go into it. I'll just notice it, be aware of it. There it is. Fear, loathing, whatever... Okay. I won't try to fix it or do anything with it. I'll just stand here."

The spacious awareness, the silent sense of Being that was obscured from your attention by the litany of complaint and its consequences, begins to emerge into the foreground and there is relief. What flows into your life, into your ordinary day-to-day experience, then seems to flow more easily, and matches the state of "no complaint."

It is this process itself that is the goal... not some finished state of supposed awakening in the future. This place and time, this one, right here.

the concept of the soul

I received a question from a lovely reader in the Netherlands, asking about reincarnation and the idea of the soul—the concept of life as a school of sorts, and the worrying thought that after death we are in some way evaluated as to whether we have adequately seen through the falseness of separation.

When we enter into a conceptual narrative such as this one—a chain of thought-stories about the existence/non existence of aspects of self or soul—we need to understand that we have effectively exited the realm of "answers."

The answer to this reader's question, which belongs to all of us, is very simple and yet it is utterly unsatisfying until it is chosen as experience, right here and now.

The answer is this: Feel the way in which the chain of questioning leads you away from "this," here and now. Feel how the chain of thought-events connected with this story takes you away from the silent grace where all is love, and all is well. That's how you can tell that the questions are hollow—they are questions arising from the dream itself, and the dream character's particular worries and fears.

This is not to say that reincarnation may not exist, or that we do not survive death. We survive death.

But be aware that to seek for answers in thought will always lead you away from the very place where answers can be non-verbally experienced, which is right here, right now, within you in this ordinary moment, which is filled to the brim with grace.

Come back out of the questioning, settle in to the silence within you. You ARE, you are safe—there is no judgment but the judgment you impose upon yourself. Realize that the focusing upon a supposed concept of events playing out in some idea of the future, whether it is an embodied future or a disembodied future, is mind-activity belonging to the dream-self. It's harmless, but it is a vehicle that leads nowhere.

Thank you very much for the question.

you are not the wanter; the wanter is not you

That wasn't a very long silence, was it? Here's a little tip that some of you may find helpful.

We try to focus our attention on the good things we want, and to eschew negative thoughts. We believe we understand the laws of attraction. If we want more money, we focus on the feeling of abundance. If we need a job, we imagine that we already have a job. If we feel unloved and desire a mate, we focus on the feeling of being just fine on our own.

This is all well and good and these mental maneuvers are steps in the right direction. But more powerful than these types of affirmations is this understanding:

The sensation of wanting something other that what you have/are right now, and identifying with it, is completely delusional. The wanter... the being within you who wants more money, more recognition, more love... that being is not real, and more importantly, that being is not you. The wanter is not who you are. Who you are, right here, right now, does not experience lack.

The wanter is a product—an effect. It's a product of a bundle of thoughts, feelings and sensations which combine to create a vibration of incompleteness and a feeling of being vulnerable, alone and in danger—sometimes known as separateness.

This wanter is the usual feeling of "me." What we normally think of as me, is not actually a me at all. It's an experience of confusion and misidentification. This happens when you are in a body and identified with the body. It's part of the territory. When you are identifying with the wanter, you are feeling as though something will eventually come along in your life that will fix your present situation. You are looking at the future, hoping it will bring you the remedy that will eliminate the want, the emptiness, the feeling of lack.

So, more effective than saying "I have plenty of abundance right now" in an effort to appease the anxieties of the wanter, is to look directly at the wanter and question not only its motivations but its very existence. It's not a matter of ceasing to desire anything but what you have (because you want inner peace)—it's more a matter of seeing that the wanter is not real. Not only is it not real, but it does not have your best interests at heart.

When you identify with the wanter and say "I" to it—when you say "I do not have enough money, enough prestige, enough health, enough love, enough enlightenment," you are engaging with a psychic liar. There is no end to what the wanter wants, because to end the cycle of wanting would mean to end its very existence. So it has no intention of leading you to relief. It only wants you to keep wanting, so it can stay alive.

When you experience yourself wanting something in the future, instead of trying not to want it, or to become present in the moment, or to come out of the thought (all of which are effective to some degree), it is even more effective to recognize what is happening.

When you experience the wanter you can just see it, just say, ah—there's my old friend, the wanter, whose very nature is to lie. Awareness is all it takes to break the spell of believing that right here, right now, is not good enough.

There are benefits to recognizing the wanter and breaking that spell, but wanting the benefits is enough to engage the wanter all over again, as it becomes the spiritual seeker. So I won't talk about the benefits. Suffice it to say that you can't have it both ways. 

So the next time you feel some grievance arising about something in your life and you feel that you want to hurry up and get to a future in which this annoying, or painful, or unenlightened state won't be occurring—see the wanter in action. Just see it. That's all that is required to realize that the pain the wanter is trying to relieve is the sensation of identifying with it in the first place. It creates the pain, and then tries to get you to run from it. There is no end to that cycle until it is seen.

to my sweet readers

As you have undoubtedly noticed, I seem to have come to a lull in posting. For the moment I feel as though I have nothing to say, or to add to what has been said by so many in so many different ways. As soon as something arises that begs to be posted, you can be sure that I'll post.

In the mean time, if anyone has a question or a subject you'd like me to write about, I'd be happy to give it a whirl. If not, we can all enjoy the silence for a while....

with love,
Marian