It was going so well… I was relishing ‘focussing on the Bright Lighters’ in my world, all the way til almost bedtime.
I made a list of Bright Lighters that came in to my day:
- Lee Holden, whose online qigong class I do every morning on the patio
- Jacinda Arden (and other women leaders responding to Covid-19) Ref
- My brother-in-law whose birthday it is today
- My G who gleams
- My adoring sis (adoring of all, and so loving to her vast tribe)
- My noble bro (such astonishing qualities of nobility, strength and love)
- My brave and doting Dad
- All the invisible Bright Lighters
- Rob Greenfield (environmental activist I’ve been watching)
- My End of Life Doula UK colleagues – oh, man… beautiful souls
- My darling AS, heartfully, wisely teaching me about the Karen meme and white privilege – as we discuss racial violence/hatred and events in NY city and Minneapolis
- My beloved L, checking in tenderly on the family with such care, wit and warmth from her lockdown pod
- The brilliant cast and writers of Gavin & Stacey which we’re watching through (I’d never seen it!)…
And then, just before bed, I thought I’d just briefly ‘check Twitter’. I glimpse what’s going on in Minneapolis where people are protesting the unspeakable murder of a black man named George Floyd by a police officer. A black CNN news reporter being arrested while reporting on live TV. A white guy in a gas mask and disguise, calmly smashing shop windows with a hammer near where people are protesting… hours after their ‘president’ wrote on Twitter, “When the looting starts the shooting starts.” And in London, a young pipsqueak of a white woman police officer (‘Karen’ + police powers) striding up to a black man in the street and cuffing him within 60 seconds for no good reason. Before I know it, I’m chucking my phone down and walking out the back door, saying “Evil, it’s pure evil. I can’t stand it.” – and sitting crying in the garden.
Help me out here. Do I look and bear witness? Or do I turn my eyes from this? The outrages of this world are unspeakable at the moment. The prevalence of hate, of prejudice, of greed are intolerable. QED from Forbes.com: Billionaires Are Getting Richer During The COVID-19 Pandemic While Most Americans Suffer.
And lest we think racial hatred and police brutality only overlap in the US, read this thread:
https://twitter.com/illh0eminati/status/1266441604170223617
Last night, after I’d turned my phone off in tearful protest, I plugged it in to charge, and it automatically started to turn itself back on, producing the familiar white screen and Apple symbol. And for the very first time I noticed the significance of the Apple with the bite taken out of it. What happened in the garden of Eden when Eve (huh!) took a bite from the apple from the Tree of Knowledge? The fall of humankind, arising from this one act of transgression, the original sin. And so here I am, and many others, looking at the world through machines labelled with the symbol of the original sin.
So… as Nessa would say, “O! What’s occurring?”
Hell? [ooooh typo alert! I meant…] Hello?
Spot on, dear soul. Is it hell, or is it heaven, here on Earth?
Oh man… I know, we need to DECIDE and act accordingly… I’m just tired.
Stephen Jenkinson said in an interview recently, “After 65 harrowing years on this planet, I can say…” Life is harrowing.
We know. We know.
Did you say, “We’ll leave you to it”?!
Calm… Reboot. There is much to discuss. You need your Heart in the right place to hear us. At the moment, you are tuned in to Chaos FM, and we are here trying to chat to you on Peace FM. Change frequency, and we will gladly discuss all these matters. And they do matter.
Ok. I’ll do a meditation.
No, not yet. Not in this state. That’s like trying to jump on to the motorway in 2nd gear. Get up, get a drink, properly shake this state out for a bit. There’s no rush. We’re right here.
k..
***15mInnerBalanceMed – High coherence 48% / Av coherence 2.4***
Wow, well I just sat helplessly in low/mod coherence for the first half of that! Amazing to see how my heart had locked into frazzle. What got me out of non-coherence eventually was:
- Getting my mind in to Neutral gear – not Reverse (ruminating on past) or 1st gear (nudging in to future planning) – just the Neutral Now (nice phrase)
- Repeating over, ‘Now I am breathing into my heart space; now I am breathing out of my heart space.”
So. Let’s see if I can tune in to Peace FM…
Try taking another random page from ACIM.
Ok….
Holy moley… It could barely be more perfect for today. Ty.
Lesson 23: I can escape from the world I see
…3. The world you see is a vengeful world, and everything in it is a symbol of vengeance. Each of your perceptions of “external reality” is a pictorial representation of your own attack thoughts. One can well ask if this can be called seeing. Is not fantasy a better word for such a process, and hallucination a more appropriate term for the result? 4. You see the world that you have made, but you do not see yourself as the image maker. You cannot be saved from the world, but you can escape from its cause. This is what salvation means, for where is the world you see when its cause is gone? 5. … As you look about you, repeat the idea slowly to yourself first, and then close your eyes and devote about a minute to searching your mind for as many attack thoughts as occur to you. As each one crosses your mind say:
I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts about _________.
Hold each attack thought in mind as you say this, and then dismiss that thought and go on to the next.
I read ACIM through in 2009-2014. It changed my life. I had forgotten some of its principles. This is good revision for me right now. Thank you.
You will be startled at the power of your focus when you recall yourself to be the subjective hallucinator, not the observer of some objective reality.
Just now, on your break, you spotted a rabbit bounding out of the woods. You picked up the binoculars from the kitchen table, and watched the rabbit as it sat munching grass in the sunshine. Suddenly, the focus of your attention was not ‘the kitchen’ with its washing up to do and the busyness of domestic life; the focus of your attention was ‘rabbit in sunshine’. In other words, through an act of shifting your gaze and magnifying the sweet object of your attention, your present moment reality shifted in to ‘pure innocence’.
This is the purpose of A Course in Miracles – to help you learn to shift your entire gaze/reality from vengeance/lamentation/binary to forgiveness/appreciation/neutrality. That’s all. It’s a return to innocence.
You are currently offering yourself many opportunities to flex this ‘muscle’ of perspective-taking, without feeling you are abandoning the ’cause’.
You noticed the self-styled Environmentalist Activist. We are not suggesting you become passive, but we are suggesting you become passivist.
Do you mean pacifist? Peace activist? Which one here? https://philosophynow.org/issues/105/Pacifism_Is_Not_Passivism
In truth dear soul, we are suggesting ‘passivist’. Where your ‘pacifist’ definition means ‘anti-war’, we mean passivist. Where you ‘pacifist’ definition means peace-loving, we may mean pacifist – but largely, you confuse ‘pacifism’ with reacting against something.
The principle is this: when you are anti- anything, you are growing that thing by your attack thoughts. When you are pro- anything, and able to bring loving appreciation to that Wanted without having thoughts of attack upon those who do not concur with you, you are achieving a miracle. So we say, notice and dismiss your attack thoughts first. Magnify the ‘rabbits in sunshine’, second. Third… see how your reality transmogrifies.
Ok. But this: I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts about _________. I think some dear to me would challenge the righteousness of ‘escaping the world I see’ when I have the ‘privilege’ to just turn off Twitter and live a good life.
Trust us. You need to step in to Heart-centred living. That is the basis of the Pivot. You have seen today, with an actual biofeedback machine, that when you focus on ‘the world you [think you] see’ out there, you see hell, and your heart gets locked in to incoherence. (Reread The Power of Now if you need to.) We need you in coherence – this is the part you are being asked to play. You. And others of course. But not all – and that is not for you to worry about. Or be perplexed about. You personally are not called to be a Journalist. You are called upon to be a Journaller: that is an internal journalist. So go inside. Report what is there. Accept the invitation to inhabit the ‘calm interiorised mind’.
The monks ‘escaped’ to the monastery for a reason: to be able to pray for the world without being knocked sideways by the ‘reality’ of it. Today, we are asked to level up by being in the world without being knocked sideways by the ‘reality’ of it. You do that by finding the peace inside of you – by finding the monastery inside your own self. And resting there. You want an act of activism? This is it.
Radical Love means so much to love the world that you endeavour to live within the potential of its pure positive peace, rather than to add to its challenges by resonating with fear or anger about its apparent disunity. You will see the Unity of humanity, and its power to Love, and you will do this as an act of service. Drop your thoughts of attack, precious soul. They come only from the blessed egoic mind. Introduce the language of the Heart to your days – and learn only to give airtime to the thoughts of pure positive wellbeing. That which we broadcast we disseminate. Think thoughts of love, you radical being.
I am giving up attack thoughts, and thinking thoughts of love in the Neutral Now