My Blog

Stacks

09/16/2012 17:39:00

“it’s probably a stack,” I said. One thing I know about “stacks”, is that they have a life of their own, and it is futile to resist. The person I was talking to seemed to understand why I was telling her this - that it was a stack. The ACIM Friday afternoon meeting was over and we were standing in the places we’d ended up in after the prayer and hugs.

“I just don’t get why I have been making myself so wrong over this, and why I have been feeling so guilty for so long,” she said. “I just haven’t been able to let this (thing I did in the past) go!”

“Exactly!,” I said. “I know exactly how you feel!. It’s probably a stack.”

So what is this thing I am calling a stack?! This is how it looks to me: Sometimes there is karma or lessons or just plain “stuff” we have to work through or transcend in our lives, and it doesn’t necessarily make any sense. This stuff comes at us like piles of paper with secret notes, stacked up on a platter that is handed to us as the “stuff” of our lives. It can be stacked up in ways that may appear connected or not. It can be a big stack or a small stack. We can give it importance and specialness.

I have come to think of this stuff (in a stack, not on a silver platter) as a chaotic, poorly written horror story thrown together about my past judgements and transgressions - that disappears page-by-page, or even all at once as I forgive and let go of attached guilt. Well, something like that.
The point here is that we just keep tripping (or falling) over and over the same kind of stuff, projecting it onto people and situations in our lives, and feeling victimized, angry, resentful, etc.

The stack idea helps explain all this and makes it possible for the serious student to move forward in the face of less than favorable results - or at least this is how it works for me. I wasn’t sure if this person I was talking to felt the same way.

“A stack has to be experienced and fully accepted,” my Course friend said back to me, adding that “if one sticks with it, no matter how long it takes, the meaning is sometimes revealed when it disappears."

“Yes,” I said, thinking of one particular frustration in my life. Lately I’d felt tormented by a less-than-favorable situation that I couldn’t seem to get past. But now, in looking at it from this viewpoint of stacks, I wondered... is this current upset (in which I beat myself to death after every interaction with a certain person) part of a stack, and was I now ready to release it?

My friend was still talking, delving into her experience with stacks: “I have noticed that I am ready to let go of a stack when my interest in it begins to wane - like it is now,” she said. “The Course teaches us that everything is neutral in this illusionary world, and since we give it all the meaning it has for us, we can also let it go.”

I nod my head in agreement. "Yes indeed!" I say, and then exclaim: "I can feel the miracle coming on for both of us!" We had talked in class about how miracles don't happen to just one person - that we are all in this together. “It’s willingness we feel,” my friend said softly, as we turned to say our good-bys to the other people in the room who hadn’t left yet.

It was another great meeting.

“To all who share the Love of God the grace is given to be the givers of what they have received. And so they learn that it is theirs forever. All barriers disappear before their coming, as every obstacle was finally surmounted that seemed to rise and block their way before. This veil you and your brother lift together opens the way to truth to more than you. Those who would let illusions be lifted from their minds are this world’s saviors, walking the world with their Redeemer, and carrying His message of hope and freedom and release from suffering to everyone who needs a miracle to save him.” T-22.IV.6

Acknowledging the Miraculous

05/17/2012 16:40:00

Something worked for me today, and I want to acknowledge it. It's highly probable that if I do not note this occurrence in some way, that it will disappear into the morass of the ego and I will once again fall into an attitude of "nothing works for me".

At this moment, in the awe of gratitude, I can't believe how often I have fallen into the negative. Haha! What's really amazing is that I think it''s normal to think of myself as not having what it takes to be happy and powerful in my life. This is what I grew up with, and I am grateful to the Course for giving me another option.

The reader is going to laugh when I say what happened, because it will look like a small thing - but let me tell you, it is a BIG BIG BIG BIG thing in my life when I can notice that I am following my intuition or my inner knowing instead of the loud noisy mental conversation of the ego that has harassed me day and night since I can remember!

So - right after lunch today, I was chatting with my renter as he passed me on his way out to walk his dog. I was doing some straightening up in the hallway leading to his apartment. Laughing at something just said, he opened the outside door and headed out with dog in tow. A thought popped into my head about something I had heard about his recent activities, and I moved to dash after him. Oops, I was barefoot and he was moving quickly down the driveway. I could see him through the window on the door.

"Let it go," a knowing said. I paused and instantly felt an urge to slip on my clogs that were right by the door, and run out to walk with him, imagining the nice time I would have. But something didn't feel right, so I decided to let him go. I finished up my task and was thinking about dawdling so that I could catch him on his way back in. It then occurred to me that he had to get his sleep and that my bringing up this particular topic might get his brain going in a direction that would keep him awake. He had just mentioned that he had to catch a quick nap and then go back to work for an evening shift. I had a feeling to let him be. It felt like a good idea to refrain from interjecting my comments, opinions, etc.

I went back into my kitchen, closing the door to the hallway behind me, thinking that I might leave it open, pretending that I was still doing something in the hallway, and thereby keep open the possibility of interacting more with my renter. Too much! I laughed to myself as I continued on my way, thinking about what was next on my to-do list.

As I closed the door, my phone rang. What good timing, I thought, as I looked at the caller id, thinking it was my husband. But it was not. It was a call I did not want to miss. It was from the realtor we have our property listed with, giving me new information. I was pleased to have gotten the call. I realized that I would not have heard the phone had I gone outside, and given that it is not uncommon for me to forget to check the answering machine for messages, this might have caused some unnecessary complications.

Well you get the point. I was so grateful to be "in tune" with the wherewithal of my life. So often in the past I had found myself being more of a critic and a whiner than a helper. Cooperation has become my new mantra (I forget the passage in the Text that brought this concept to my attention, but when I read it, I knew there was a message there for me!!). It's been a few months now, since I took note of this lack of cooperation (on my part) in my life.

For years, in self-help groups and spiritual circles that I frequented (mostly the Forum/EST crowd), I was often advised to surrender. "Surrender, Kathy!", someone would say. "Surrender what?", I would think. Dah....the ego!!! I finally get it after all these year!! I just love it, that this could have escaped me for so long. It was too simple for me to see. And just so you know, my key for this surrender is cooperation, and what keeps me engaged is the peace and joy that comes with this right-minded attitude.

Looking back over the current situation, I can see the cooperation (on my part) in a subtle way: i.e. I was deciding my course of action based on what was best for my renter, and not my own needs. Also, my husband was quite grateful for my having taken this call. When you think about it, I really did nothing, but I WAS cooperating!!!

I think it might be useful at this point, to acknowledge that many positive things have been happening in my life lately, and I believe, directly related to my "cooperating". As I let go of this ego need to be in control (even if I am right!!!, if you know what I mean! :)), I am more happy, being a positive element for myself and others. Thank God!!! I have had enough of the gloom and doom attitude - I give thanks to the spiritual energy that is propelling me toward the Truth.

What's in a Label?

04/30/2012 22:42:00

A study group member mentioned that she has been feeling apathetic lately. I didn't think much of it until today when I was reflecting on my lack of motivation in terms of getting anything done on my to-do list. Hmm.."lack of motivation" - "apathy". Same thing?

Funny how things look different when they wear a different label. Apathy isn't a term that I usually apply to myself. At least not in a general sense. I might say that I feel apathetic in regard to a particular event, but I'd never say that I felt apathetic as a description of my overall mood or attitude.

But darn, isn't that what I am experiencing right now, and have been this past week? And while I am at it, I am remembering periods of my life when I was so un-motivated, I barely had the will to accomplish anything!!

In 2001, just before we moved to De Land, I remember that I had to use a motivating technique to get myself to do my housework and pay bills. I was pathetic, I thought. I had a notebook that I laid on the kitchen table. I would write down what I was going to do next, how long I thought it was going to take me, plus the starting time and date. I would return to the notebook in the time allotted and write what I had accomplished, be it the said task or something else - whatever! It was a game and I found it fascinating to discover what I would actually do with my time when I said I would do a certain thing.

Anyway, I don't really know why that worked for me (the course says we don't know what anything is for), but it did, and enough so, that I managed to get the basics of my work done, If I didn't write it down I couldn't get myself to start any activity. Btw, I was leading motivational seminars at the time, so I guess I was teaching what I needed to learn!! But until today, it never occurred to me that I was apathetic!

Today I took a look at this "apathy" thing and embraced it. It seemed to be a more accurate description of my state than the "lack of motivation" label I liked to use. It had a kind of zingy feel to it when I thought it to myself (kind of like the word "cooperate" did when I read that word in the text a while back, but that's another story!!!)

"Am I apathetic?" I asked myself. What exactly does that mean, I wondered this as I followed the trail of information that seemed to be opening up in front of me. "I need to listen to myself", is what was coming to me. I had just given my study group friend a bunch of info and opinions on what I thought could be happening to her. Maybe this is what I needed to hear for myself.

First off, I had told her that emotions move on if we do not resist them (something I remember Werner Erhard having said many years ago at an EST seminar). Ok, I told myself - let's stop resisting. Just feel it. What is there?: I just plain don't want to do anything. The ego (that I think I am) is pissed because life hasn't gone my way - I can feel anger coming up now. The apathy is changing - just like Werner said it would. It's morphed (is that a word?!) into anger! Who knew?! I didn't know what I was angry about and I didn't care (again, do we really know what anything is for?)

I was starting to feel and I started to act - I got up from my chair and went outside, It was hot, but I didn't care. I got the lawn mower out - I had been putting that off for over a week- and went looking for my gloves. The next thing I know I am mowing the lawn and remembering what a perfectionist I usually am. I say remembering, because I couldn't stomach that today - I just couldn't make myself mow that lawn perfectly, no matter what. Too much like work. And complicated. And time-consuming. So I didn't!!! I actually had fun, skipping around and just doing the parts that really needed cutting.

As I mowed, I felt exhaustion - but not from the physical labor - from thinking about all the energy I put out in doing things in the most perfect way! Geeze! "Get a life, Kathy," is what I said to my perfectionist ego - "This is no longer you!" It seems like I am going to be able to do things as they seem fit in the present circumstances and to heck with the past and old rules of procedure. I am taking on some new rules: "Give it (me - Kathy!!) a break"! Lighten up. Wear life like a light jacket. Easy does it! One minute at a time! i.e in course terms, I am choosing to listen to the right mind rather then to the wrong-minded ways of the ego. I am grateful

It's only been a couple of hours since I talked with my friend. The apathy has lifted. Life has gotten a lot simpler.

Conditions are Favorable!

04/30/2012 12:19:00

Just a quick note to acknowledge the study groups at CMH and their participants. Wow! I can't imagine feeling more accepted or loved than I do with this bunch of spiritual students.

It is said that stuff happens when conditions are favorable. (Dr. David R. Hawkins)

Something is happening and conditions seem to be favorable. Many of us are feeling it. We know that the phenomena is taking place on a planetary level, and not just in Eustice, FL, but I live here, and I'm looking forward to seeing what pops up next with Donna and David Kersey and with this ACIM group....look out!!

I'm wondering if anyone would be interested in expanding this conversation (that takes place in the ACIM groups). Not sure in what direction, but something wants to expand here (extend?), and I am listening for guidance...

Does the Holy Spirit Really Speak to Me?

04/06/2012 21:55:00

I love the value I get from going to study groups! Today another student pointed out something to me. It was about Holy Spirit giving a thought to help me. I hadn't seen this myself. In the group I shared a story about how I had miraculously avoided judging a family member when I was headed in that direction. In fact, I felt love for this person that I had just been about to demonize and then I found myself making a joke about this "awful" situation! Unheard of for me! ,

This student said that I must have gotten help from the Holy Spirit. Hmmm.....I remember having this thought about my Mother and how she had been unfairly judged when I was growing up. Suddenly I was able to feel love for my Mother and to extend this love to the person in front of me. This, the idea of love and forgiveness was a thought-gift from Holy Spirit?

Yes!! I get it. I am not alone, and the prayer that I have been saying every day has been answered. I wonder what else I miss in a day?! I smile, remembering this particular student who helped me. She is the one who always reminds us of the biblical passage: Where two or more are gathered... I can't quote that exactly, but I can thank this fellow student for sharing her love and insights with me.

It Can Save You Money to Solve Problems at Their Source

04/05/2012 15:53:00

This week It took more than the usual twenty-four hours to recover from Friday afternoon's study group. It's natural for me to feel spacey and a bit disoriented after a meeting, so I look forward to grounding myself with pizza and a movie when I get home, but that didn't do the trick this week. Saturday morning came and I was not "myself" yet. I think I was in shock. Maybe ego-shock is a betted description. I decided to do something physical, as that is another of my grounding techniques. I went outdoors to mow the lawn, but more on that later...

In Friday's class I had a revelation about the source of one of my favorite coping mechanisms. In the study group, I had been sharing (bragging) about a procedure that I use often to trick the ego (MY ego!) into lightening up when I feel especially depressed or trapped by life's circumstances (MY circumstances!). I was sharing this with a particular group member whom I thought could be 'helped" with this brilliancy of mine.

I felt that this particular person needed to give herself a break - to not be so hard on herself. This was a projection, of course, in that I was being especially unforgiving of myself whenever I "needed" to use this coping mechanism. I didn't realize this at the time. It came to me a few days later.

Anyway, back to the class: Donna was talking to me, suggesting that in the use of my "technique", I may have been in fact, using "magic" in an attempt to alleviate my suffering! She was saying that external circumstances are not the source of anything, but are in fact only perceived (projected) effects of the wrong mind (illusions). So when one applies things of this world to fix things of this world, well you've gone to the wrong place for a solution! This is magic.

I had never looked at it this way before! Magic is not a new concept to me. I understood it intellectually, but was obviously blind to identifying it in my own life! Who knew?!

I looked up and saw everyone looking at me. I don't know if this was projection or not, but I saw sadness on everyone's face and I felt depression in the room. It even looked darker, like the lights had dimmed.

Yikes! This was one of those Course moments when "reality" starts to shift. My mind was still going a million miles an hour with defensive/explanatory thoughts, but I was also trying to understand what was being said to me, as I fed back to Donna what I thought she had been saying: "So", I said, "my so-called helpful technique only reinforces the ego belief that the pain and sorrows of my life are caused (or relieved) by circumstances outside of myself! The Source and therefore solution to my anger and resentment is within myself, in the Mind. Access to seeing things differently is granted through prayer and not through made up stories that placate the ego." Donna nods affirmatively, my studymates smile.

But wait!...now I am fearful that I am getting this only on an intellectual level, so I say it again, like a good student: "Magic is insidious because you think that you are helping to reduce suffering but you are only reinforcing the wrong minded thinking of the ego. Nothing is really healed."

Will I be able to apply this to my life,? I am now worrying that I could be surrendering a useful magic trick and that life will get more emotional, or worse yet - boring!

Well, the next morning I was back mowing the lawn, as I said earlier, finishing up the task I had begun the day before (and before the ACIM meeting). Something was very different, though: This time I was quite enjoying myself.

Yesterday when I was mowing, all I could do was complain. I enrolled my husband in my misery and he had accommodated me by suggesting ways to solve my problem. We have an electric mower with a cord, so he suggested we throw out our commitment to reducing reliance on fossil fuels and purchase a gasoline mower. He had other good ideas as well, like getting a more flexible cord, but the point I want to make is that we were trying to solve it on the level of form, in the circumstances. And it was going to cost us time and money.

Today as I mowed, I was unaware of any story in my head about any kind of circumstances. I was just mowing the lawn. Period. Something had shifted in the class and it had held! A miracle? It felt like it, and it looked like it too, as my perspective of the circumstances (same circumstances as before - not new or better made-up ones!) had shifted and I saw things very differently.

The moral of the story is that it's cheaper and more efficient to follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit than that of ego. Magic is fun, but it can take time and money. I need no nothing, as they say in the Course!

Why is it that my mate (special person) cannot see what I am seeing, when I try to help him?

03/13/2012 13:11:00

Q: I am wondering if I am interpreting the following text correctly: It seems to me that it supports something I was referring to in Friday's Study Group: that we each hear the words of the Course from our own perspective, as we perceive everything in this world from a seemingly separate position.

In reading this passage, I am getting this on an even deeper level! In the past (few weeks) I have asked Holy Spirit to help me understand why is it that my mate (special person) cannot see what I am seeing, when I try(!) to help (:)) him by pointing out something I am seeing about his behavior.

I am not speaking of just putting my opinion out there randomly, but at moments when we are already in a discussion about the dynamics of an upset that has just occurred: I get that I am "being right" in insisting that he look at it from my point of view (e.g. " Jim, this is just like the time you did abc, and it looks like you are coming from anger at authority again, etc. etc. etc.), but I am also seeing here that perhaps he "cannot" get what I am saying because he is not looking from where I am looking. So this kind of behavior, in trying to help someone else, is futile. Is this what you get from this passage?:

"No two can look on sin together, for they could never see it at the same place and time. Sin is a strictly individual perception, seen in the other yet believed by each to be within himself. And each one seems to make a different error, and one the other cannot understand. Brother, it is the same, made by the same, and forgiven for its maker in the same way. The holiness of your relationship forgives you and your brother, undoing the efects of what you both believed and saw."T-22.Introduction.1:4-7

I thank Holy Spirit for bringing the possibility of happiness into my life.

03/08/2012 11:23:00

This morning I awoke with the thought: "Omg! it's already the first week of March and I have so much to accomplish by the 19th!!!" At 2 pm I was hoping I hadn't wasted too much of the day, I decided that I was doing the right thing by sneaking in a hair cut. Jim had pulled a muscle while working on the shed roof yesterday, so I was "cooperating" with him, driving him around on errands and other activities that might require him to move in ways that caused him pain. No big deal....I had all evening to catch up on my projects.

Before delving into the pile of papers that represented my primary project (gathering IRS tax information for our accountant), I decided to take a quick detour to another project and burn a fitness cd to my computer, so I could transfer it to my iPad via iTunes. It should have been simple, but it wasn't. At some point I lost my peace. Typical, I told myself, as frustration set in. This is something that ALWAYS gets to me. When am I going to learn not to get goal-oriented when I am working on the computer?

Then I made my second mistake: I did another ALWAYS that I do when I get into technical difficulties - I whined to my husband. That only made matters worse, of course, as iTunes is not his area of expertise and he really didn't give a hoot anyway. etc. etc.

At the back of my mind I am having another conversation about how I had obviously chosen the ego instead of Holy Spirit to guide my actions, and that it might be a good idea to pause and pray to see things differently. I did do that, finally, after apologizing to Jim for involving him in my "stuff". Now I was feeling frustration in addition to guilt and remorse and stupidity at having one!more!time! succeeded in sabotaging my productivity by becoming emotional.

After praying, I lightened up. I patted myself on the back for "getting-off-it" so quickly. I remembered how I used to get really!-really! upset when the computer didn't cooperate with my time-schedule, and I'd be whining for hours about being unfairly treated. Sometimes I couldn't get back to my work at all! - I thought I had to emotionally escape with food and drink and maybe t.v. or a walk to help me mellow-out.

As I was indulging myself with my getting-better-all-the-time stories, a different kind of thought occurred to me from out of the blue. I had just begun to follow my thoughts down a "positive thinking" path that was going to tell me that this computer thing was a difficult hurdle for me, and that maybe one day I would be spiritually stronger, or some such thing, and I would have more peace of mind, when it occurred to me that this kind of thinking was not consistent with ACIM. Was this true? I paused and listened to this new thought that was questioning my previous thinking .... did I not remember the discussion in last Friday's ACIM group? Donna or David was telling me that all things in this world are equally neutral - ALL things!!!!

Then I remembered something else - the Course says there is no hierarchy of miracles, so why am I telling myself that my marriage can be healed, that I can forgive previously unpardonable sins, that I can let go of debilitating fears, but my frustrations with the computer are different - it's an insurmountable problem? Wow! Freedom is looming on the horizon! I whip out my ACIM book and I look in my notes on the inside cover to find the reference I had for hierarchy of events.

It is Chapter 23 in the Text, section II. I read:

The first chaotic law is that the truth is different for everyone. Like all these principles, this one maintains that each is separate and has a different set of thoughts that set him off from others. This principle evolves from the belief there is a hierarchy of illusions; some are more valuable and therefore true.

Think how this seems to interfere with the first principle of miracles. For this establishes degrees of truth among illusions, making it seem that some of them are harder to overcome than others. If it were realized that they are all the same and equally untrue, it would be easy, then, to understand that miracles apply to all of them. Errors of any kind can be corrected because

they are untrue. When brought to truth instead of to each other, they merely disappear. No part of nothing can be more resistant to the truth than can another.

Ok! I thank Holy Spirit for bringing the possibility of happiness into my life, and I thank Donna and David Kersey and this wonderful ACIM group at ATCIM I want to add one more thought that is developing in my mind at this moment - I do believe that I have many other difficult "problems" in my life, and I am now open to seeing them, with the help of Holy Spirit, for the illusions that they are. ~ Kathy K. 3/3/12