in a state of grace forever

The purpose of all true spiritual teachings, no matter their methodology, is to lead you to a point of recognizing your own nature. That nature is always here, whether or not you recognize it. The sun continues to shine, even if you close your eyes.

The experience of feeling separate (feeling, not being separate, which is impossible) from your own true, divine nature is traumatic. It's frightening. Sometimes I think all of us here in this dream of life on planet earth are suffering from post traumatic stress disorder.

Can you imagine how traumatic it would be to be caught in one of your nighttime dreams and feel as though you had no hope of awakening? What if you felt that the only way you could get out of the dream would be to die within it? What if you began to believe that you had originated within that dream and you completely lost all memory of the self you had been—safe at home asleep.

That's the situation we are in here.

We have completely forgotten who we are and have become totally identified with the characters we are playing in this dream-drama of life on earth. And this is as it should be, until the fear and suffering begin to become counterproductive.

The purpose of all true spiritual teachings is not to actually teach you anything. You do not need to learn anything. But you need to remember—to see, to notice—that your attention has become trapped by a projection and you've gotten temporarily lost and identified with that projection. All spiritual teachings do is help you free your trapped attention so you can remember.

When your attention is trapped you make assumptions according to that level of entrapment. You believe that the projection is real and this creates a platform from which you begin to judge. As you judge according to the perceptions of the dream, you solidify your place within the dream. Your judgments contribute to the solidity of the dream experience and the seeming reality of your dream self.

So the process of awakening to the state of grace that is your true nature, is a process of suspending judgment. It's a process of not-doing. Of stopping doing. It's a process of realizing that anything you do (in your desire to awaken) on the basis of the perceived projection has to be a deepening of that projection. There's really nothing you can do to help yourself. But there are many habitual reactions that you can stop doing, which allow the help that is always there to arise within you.

This is what ACIM calls forgiveness—the realization that you cannot judge and act from that judgment without deepening the entrapment of your attention and intensifying your feelings of isolation and separateness.

It is what you stop doing that frees you, not what you do.

Comments

[Simon]

I've obviously stopped commenting as frequently here, Marian, but I so enjoy reading everything and I feel so amazingly... reminded... after coming here every time you post. Just in case you feel like there should be more of an audience or something. Not that you DO think there should be, or are doing it for an audience.

I always leave feeling more centred than when I came. Much love for that.

[marian]

Hi Simon. It's lovely to hear from you as always. I do appreciate comments, because although I write for myself I also write with the sincere hope that what I put up here will be of help to someone else. I've received so much help and my desire is to pass it on...

So thanks for letting me know. Much love to you for that, as well.

[Simon]

A well-placed desire, I think. Since the beginning, I've been amazed at the simple eloquence you are able to produce which expresses sometimes very ephemeral concepts and thoughts in ways made so much more tangible and reachable through your words.

[www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=771609810]

Thank you for this beautful post. Practising forgiveness can be challenging sometimes but your post helps a lot.
Unfortunately our bodies can only see the duality of the dream world but not the unity of the real world.

[marian]

Hi Roeland,
Well it's not really the body that is seeing. The body can't actually see, because the world does not actually exist as an external thing to be seen. (Not easy to get the mind around that one!)

So the experience of the senses is always a projection occurring within the mind, and one that is dependent upon what part of the mind is doing the projecting. A little food for contemplation!

thank you,
m.

[Aileen]

What a fantastic post, Marian! What caught my eye today is the idea that judgment within the dream solidifies it or makes it more real. Every tiny judgment seems to be saying there is cause for upset in the world, so therefore it must be real.