"Perception is not an attribute of God. His is the realm of knowledge. Yet, He has created the Holy Spirit as the mediator between perception and knowledge. Without this link with God, perception would have replaced knowledge forever in our mind." W-43.pI.1:1-4
What is perception? Perception is the way we see the world. Knowledge is the Truth of who we really are. In this world of form, (perception) we may find ourselves experiencing lack, limitation, fear, pain, and so on. In Truth, however, we are already perfect, whole, and complete; eternally joyous lacking nothing. So what is it that stop us from remembering the truth of who we are? Our perceptions. Our ideas, concepts, beliefs we have about ourselves.
By turning within and connecting with the part of ourselves that remembers who we really are, (mediator, a.k.a. Holy Spirit, or whatever name we feel comfortable with) the memory of God within us is restored and we have immediate access to knowledge.
What is that knowledge feels like or look like? That cannot be explained or comprehended intellectually. That is an experience that will reveal itself when we are willing to surrender our perceptions to Spirit. So this year, beginning today, let’s surrender everything to God so what we can have the direct experience of who we really are. All that is required from us is our willingness to be still and know that we are God!
Remember to order a copy of Nick's book What Happens When You Let God at: www.TruthAndMiracles.com or www.WhatHappensWhenYouLetGod.com
And to hire Nick to speak at your church, college or corporate event, simply visit: www.NickArandesPomo.com
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Monday, December 14, 2009
Dangers of Studying A Course in Miracles
I received the following question from a previous post:
> WHAT?! I don't understand this... The entire Course states
> we aren't separate, yet this statement that God "created
> beings" - separate? "who have everything individually"? We
> have everything "individually"? What am I missing here?
> Help!
This is what A Course was stating:
> "God, who encompasses all being, nevertheless created beings who have
> everything individually but who want to share it to increase their joy.
> Nothing that is real can be increased except by sharing. That's why
> God Himself created you. Divine abstraction takes joy in application,
> and that is what creation means. `How,' `what,' and
> `to whom' are irrelevant because real creation gives everything
> since it can create only like itself." -A Course in Miracles
> (Original Version)
This is the way I responded to the question:
Here is where language gets gets confusion. All that there is is God. In other words "God Is". God did not create anything apart from Itself. There is no such thing. My experience would suggest that I am separate from something but in reality, that is just my unconscious projection that see a world filled with billions and trillions of separate images.
If God would have created beings that are separate, then A Course in Miracles would be contradicting itself. This is the danger of studying A Course in Miracles and trying to ANAL-ize it, because then it allows for the ego to dissect and try to figure out what every word means, etc. That's how the ego manages to keep our attention on illusions, such as A Course in Miracles' text. See the trap? ! ;-)
Remember, the point is, God cannot give something outside of Himself, he can only extend. This is difficult to grasp, or I should say, to intellectually understand. How can I extend myself and give to myself when I see "others" separate from me?
All I can tell you is, I don't have to know the answers to any questions, as a matter of fact, I am not even interested in the answers to every question, all I know is that I don't know, and that I constantly surrender my thoughts to the Holy Spirit for reinterpretation.
Also a lot of times, people try to apply the concept of giving and receiving to form. As if though the more they give to others the more they get back, which comes from manipulative and scarcity consciousness. I know intellectually that when I give I am giving to myself because there is only one of us in the room. However, my experience suggest that what I give away I no longer have. So what I do is, I just give if I feel like and don't if I don't. I just don't make an issue out of it.
My daily practice is to continue offering my thoughts and decisions to the Holy Spirit as I continue on my journey trusting that everything is unfolding perfectly as it will, and that's it. So I would not get too bug down with what anything means on A Course in Miracles because if you do, you'll end up like most people do, teaching it.
"It emphasizes application rather than theory, and experience rather than theology. It specifically states that "a universal theology is impossible, but a universal experience is not only possible but necessary." ACIM (C-in.2:5)
"Without the practical application the Workbook provides, the Text would remain largely a series of abstractions which would hardly suffice to bring about the thought reversal at which the Course aims." ACIM
So the questions is, do you want to experience your oneness with God or do you want to figure out intellectually what everything means? Because that will keep you from having the experience the Course aims at.
"...forget this course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God." W-pI.189.7:7
As for me, I am not interested in the words, I am interested in the experience. And in order for me to open up to that experience all I need to remember is that I do not know. And be happy and okay with that. Who is the giver? Who is the receiver? Who am I giving to? Who am I receiving from? All of these questions have something in common, they are all meaningless!
Remember to order a copy of Nick's book What Happens When You Let God at: www.TruthAndMiracles.com or www.WhatHappensWhenYouLetGod.com
And to hire Nick to speak at your church, college or corporate event, simply visit: www.NickArandesPomo.com
> WHAT?! I don't understand this... The entire Course states
> we aren't separate, yet this statement that God "created
> beings" - separate? "who have everything individually"? We
> have everything "individually"? What am I missing here?
> Help!
This is what A Course was stating:
> "God, who encompasses all being, nevertheless created beings who have
> everything individually but who want to share it to increase their joy.
> Nothing that is real can be increased except by sharing. That's why
> God Himself created you. Divine abstraction takes joy in application,
> and that is what creation means. `How,' `what,' and
> `to whom' are irrelevant because real creation gives everything
> since it can create only like itself." -A Course in Miracles
> (Original Version)
This is the way I responded to the question:
Here is where language gets gets confusion. All that there is is God. In other words "God Is". God did not create anything apart from Itself. There is no such thing. My experience would suggest that I am separate from something but in reality, that is just my unconscious projection that see a world filled with billions and trillions of separate images.
If God would have created beings that are separate, then A Course in Miracles would be contradicting itself. This is the danger of studying A Course in Miracles and trying to ANAL-ize it, because then it allows for the ego to dissect and try to figure out what every word means, etc. That's how the ego manages to keep our attention on illusions, such as A Course in Miracles' text. See the trap? ! ;-)
Remember, the point is, God cannot give something outside of Himself, he can only extend. This is difficult to grasp, or I should say, to intellectually understand. How can I extend myself and give to myself when I see "others" separate from me?
All I can tell you is, I don't have to know the answers to any questions, as a matter of fact, I am not even interested in the answers to every question, all I know is that I don't know, and that I constantly surrender my thoughts to the Holy Spirit for reinterpretation.
Also a lot of times, people try to apply the concept of giving and receiving to form. As if though the more they give to others the more they get back, which comes from manipulative and scarcity consciousness. I know intellectually that when I give I am giving to myself because there is only one of us in the room. However, my experience suggest that what I give away I no longer have. So what I do is, I just give if I feel like and don't if I don't. I just don't make an issue out of it.
My daily practice is to continue offering my thoughts and decisions to the Holy Spirit as I continue on my journey trusting that everything is unfolding perfectly as it will, and that's it. So I would not get too bug down with what anything means on A Course in Miracles because if you do, you'll end up like most people do, teaching it.
"It emphasizes application rather than theory, and experience rather than theology. It specifically states that "a universal theology is impossible, but a universal experience is not only possible but necessary." ACIM (C-in.2:5)
"Without the practical application the Workbook provides, the Text would remain largely a series of abstractions which would hardly suffice to bring about the thought reversal at which the Course aims." ACIM
So the questions is, do you want to experience your oneness with God or do you want to figure out intellectually what everything means? Because that will keep you from having the experience the Course aims at.
"...forget this course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God." W-pI.189.7:7
As for me, I am not interested in the words, I am interested in the experience. And in order for me to open up to that experience all I need to remember is that I do not know. And be happy and okay with that. Who is the giver? Who is the receiver? Who am I giving to? Who am I receiving from? All of these questions have something in common, they are all meaningless!
Remember to order a copy of Nick's book What Happens When You Let God at: www.TruthAndMiracles.com or www.WhatHappensWhenYouLetGod.com
And to hire Nick to speak at your church, college or corporate event, simply visit: www.NickArandesPomo.com
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Bringing Illusions to Truth
"When you try to bring truth to illusions, you are trying to make illusions real, and keep illusions by justifying your belief in the illusions. But to give illusions to truth is to enable truth to teach that the illusions are unreal, and thus enable you to escape from the illusions." T-17.I.5:4-5
That is a very powerful excerpt from the Course. In the world of form where we seem to live in, we have all sorts of experiences; some could be labeled as good, others bad, and the rest fall somewhere in between. However, these are just judgments we have made about the world that we perceive with our physical senses. According to the Course, the world we see is an outward representation of an inward condition. And what is that inward condition? It is nothing but our idea, or I should say our belief that we are separate from our Source; from Spirit; from God.
So what most of us are taught to do is, we look at the world of form, (illusion), we believe in what we see, and we hope that God somehow make our world look better. So we pray, we do mantras, we try all sorts of techniques to change our experience until we come to the painful realization that most of the time our efforts go unheard. The reason being is, God is not interested in having us continue to perpetuate our illusions, God wants us to remember that we are perfect, whole and complete, lacking nothing, that we are divine extensions of Spirit, God, whatever you want to call it. That is our Truth!
Why in the world God would want to answer a prayer that has nothing to do with who we truly are? If I am in the kingdom, meaning, that is my truth where I have EVERYTHING, and here I am experiencing scarcity and pain, why would God would want to give me what I want in form, when in Truth I have it all? And in the mind of God, which is all that there is anyway, God is asking us to give up our attachments to a world we have made up in order for us to come to that recognition.
So instead of looking at our world of illusion and trying to shine truth to it by telling God our plans and giving him a list of requests, which only perpetuates our belief in illusions, all we need to do is to bring our illusions to Spirit so that It can help us see them for what they are. That's how we bring illusions to truth. And we don't have to work hard at this, all we need to do is have the willingness to say, God, I don't know what anything means, or what this is for. With our willingness to recognize that we know nothing, the Holy Spirit can then transform our experience(s). And regardless of what happens after that, at least, as a result of our transformation we get to experience peace.
Remember to order a copy of Nick's book What Happens When You Let God at: www.TruthAndMiracles.com or www.WhatHappensWhenYouLetGod.com
And to hire Nick to speak at your church, college or corporate event, simply visit: www.NickArandesPomo.com
That is a very powerful excerpt from the Course. In the world of form where we seem to live in, we have all sorts of experiences; some could be labeled as good, others bad, and the rest fall somewhere in between. However, these are just judgments we have made about the world that we perceive with our physical senses. According to the Course, the world we see is an outward representation of an inward condition. And what is that inward condition? It is nothing but our idea, or I should say our belief that we are separate from our Source; from Spirit; from God.
So what most of us are taught to do is, we look at the world of form, (illusion), we believe in what we see, and we hope that God somehow make our world look better. So we pray, we do mantras, we try all sorts of techniques to change our experience until we come to the painful realization that most of the time our efforts go unheard. The reason being is, God is not interested in having us continue to perpetuate our illusions, God wants us to remember that we are perfect, whole and complete, lacking nothing, that we are divine extensions of Spirit, God, whatever you want to call it. That is our Truth!
Why in the world God would want to answer a prayer that has nothing to do with who we truly are? If I am in the kingdom, meaning, that is my truth where I have EVERYTHING, and here I am experiencing scarcity and pain, why would God would want to give me what I want in form, when in Truth I have it all? And in the mind of God, which is all that there is anyway, God is asking us to give up our attachments to a world we have made up in order for us to come to that recognition.
So instead of looking at our world of illusion and trying to shine truth to it by telling God our plans and giving him a list of requests, which only perpetuates our belief in illusions, all we need to do is to bring our illusions to Spirit so that It can help us see them for what they are. That's how we bring illusions to truth. And we don't have to work hard at this, all we need to do is have the willingness to say, God, I don't know what anything means, or what this is for. With our willingness to recognize that we know nothing, the Holy Spirit can then transform our experience(s). And regardless of what happens after that, at least, as a result of our transformation we get to experience peace.
Remember to order a copy of Nick's book What Happens When You Let God at: www.TruthAndMiracles.com or www.WhatHappensWhenYouLetGod.com
And to hire Nick to speak at your church, college or corporate event, simply visit: www.NickArandesPomo.com
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