May #ItAintSquareToPrepare become the guiding motto of my life! I think that allowing myself to feel ‘Prepped & Pleased’ might be the biggest break-through in psychological self-care and self-kindness that I’ve made in a while! There is so much comfort to be had in ‘doing the doing’, and sitting back to appreciate the peaceful elixir of the ‘done-ness’.
***ACIM-MT11+20minMED***
If I were to ask you, ‘How was my meditation this morning?’, what would you say?
We would say, easy. Why? Because you know the ease of sitting and letting ‘reality’ dissolve softly like a lump of sugar in hot tea. As your mind relaxes its grip, all hardship becomes softness, and all trouble becomes solution. You start to spot your ‘IMPulses and glIMPses’ and in that mode all answers are available to you.
Interesting. I’d sensed my mind a bit clenched and active.
We suggested earlier that you start the day with exercise. That would have burnt off some of the agitation.
Lucky I didn’t cause it started with pouring with rain outside!
Those are precisely the conditions which would have given you such a vivid sense of the Here and Now that you would have Ceased Thought.
Ah… I see.
I did love this ACIM chapter – Manual for Teachers – Chapter 11:
M-11.2. Again we come to the question of judgment. 2 This time ask yourself whether your judgment or the Word of God is more likely to be true. 3 For they say different things about the world, and things so opposite that it is pointless to try to reconcile them. 4 God offers the world salvation; your judgment would condemn it. 5 God says there is no death; your judgment sees but death as the inevitable end of life. 6 God’s Word assures you that He loves the world; your judgment says it is unlovable. 7 Who is right? 8 For one of you is wrong. 9 It must be so…. M-11.4. Peace is impossible to those who look on war. 2 Peace is inevitable to those who offer peace. 3 How easily, then, is your judgment of the world escaped! … 11 Now is the question different. 12 It is no longer, “Can peace be possible in this world?” but instead, “Is it not impossible that peace be absent here?”
‘Peace is inevitable to those who offer peace.’ This stayed with me.
We saw you this morning, sitting soft and upright so that a pendulum might hang within you in perfect peace and stillness. You were offering peace, and so it came back to you. You found it a little uncomfortable, as the mind is deeply suspicious of peace. It thrives on strife. Recall the passage you read earlier:
T-5.III.8.7 Peace is the ego’s greatest enemy because, according to its interpretation of reality, war is the guarantee of its survival. 8 The ego becomes strong in strife. 9 If you believe there is strife you will react viciously, because the idea of danger has entered your mind. 10 The idea itself is an appeal to the ego. 11 The Holy Spirit is as vigilant as the ego to the call of danger, opposing it with His strength just as the ego welcomes it. 12 The Holy Spirit counters this welcome by welcoming peace. 13 Eternity and peace are as closely related as are time and war. … T-5.III.11. The ego made the world as it perceives it, but the Holy Spirit, the re-interpreter of what the ego made, sees the world as a teaching device for bringing you home.
As you sat soft and upright, the Holy Spirit worked with you to reinterpret the ego’s rendition of reality. Little by little, you become prepared to see through the eyes of Spirit or Source (and your Inner Being – for they are indeed the same thing to you) – and thus dispense with the machinations of the ego.
Beautiful. And so, today? Your guidance?
Your guidance says, sit soft and upright, and offer only peace, love and kindness. Let the pendulum hang within you in perfect peace and stillness. Thus will the magnetism of pure, positive energy flow through and with you, as is the natural state.
Lovely. Can you clarify? We have family visiting today… How does this look?
- Be prepped
- Be pleased (with your preparations and your work)
- Be pendulum ready (so that you might sit soft and upright, and offer only peace, love and kindness)
So, it’s time to still the inner whirlwind.
Please. Yes. You are now ready to offer a vibration of peace in the presence of others. You used to offer a quivering vibration of expectant nervousness, which was sweet and self-deprecating. But today, your family will work with you on soft readiness, described as ‘pendulum ready’ because you could sit ready for the Next Now Moment and the Next, without your inner pendulum even stirring. Practise this today, and use it tomorrow with your new training too. See what happens when you arrive fully at each next segment – not leaping into it as a panting commuter throws herself onto the departing bus as its doors are starting to close. Be so steady and ready internally, be so fully ‘pre-paved’ that you are just rubbing your hands with glee to receive the next moment.
This is about segment intending and pre-paving?
Absolutely. this is your new way forward. To own the moments by working up to them, in advance.
PIA [Prepare in Advance]
Know what you are wanting and bring yourself into alignment with it – in time. Time is only part of this domain to give you the sheer satisfaction of experiencing creation, growth, evolution, manifestation, the fruition of thought! So, play by its rules with fun at the heart of all you do! Time is here to give you joy, if you will but see through the eyes of Source.
Look up quotes on ‘time’ in Chapter T-5.iii
- Delay is of the ego, because time is its concept. Both time and delay are meaningless in eternity.
- I have repeatedly emphasized that one level of the mind is not understandable to another. So it is with the ego and the Holy Spirit; with time and eternity. Eternity is an idea of God, so the Holy Spirit understands it perfectly. Time is a belief of the ego, so the lower mind, which is the ego’s domain, accepts it without question. The only aspect of time that is eternal is now.
- Eternity and peace are as closely related as are time and war.
- The Holy Spirit must perceive time, and reinterpret it into the timeless.
So, Source and HS ‘perceive time, and reinterpret it into the timeless.’
And your role is to use your super-ego to create the next holy Now… and be there to receive it and witness it. That is Source experiencing itself as the Creator. There’s nothing more satisfying than that. Let the painter know in advance what she is painting, so that she can marvel at the result when (in time) it is complete.
Completion. So important.
It’s a portal back to Now. Grant yourself that gift. Be so ready that you can sit soft and upright with your inner pendulum steady.
I am pendulum ready