187 - 懂得放下，何等自在！緣份是找到包容你的人!

懂得放下，何等自在！

記住 anger ( 發怒 ) 與 danger ( 危險) 只差一個字

別看少這一個字它會影響我們這份職業、甚至人際關係正所謂「禍從口出…」

專家講: 「人，面對外人時， 總是可以表現得雍容大肚、心平氣和， 但面對自己最親近的家人，卻往往一點小事就足以皺起眉頭，甚至出言相傷。」

正如你永遠只對你最愛、最親的人生氣, 但是你會對住你上司、老板生氣嗎 ?

如果形容人類是一種“出門高E.Q ，回家低E.Q 的動物”，我想一點兒也不誇張，多拿出一點耐心與包容給家人吧！否則您自己也不會快樂，不是嗎？

曾在報上看過英文中的stressed （壓力），與 desserts （甜點）兩字，有很微妙的相關。是什麼相關呢？ 仔細一瞧，好像沒什麼關係嘛！可是，再看一下，咦，stressed 這個字從後面倒過來拼寫，不就是 desserts 嗎？ 所以，「Stressed is just desserts if you can reverse. 」壓力就是甜點，只要你能逆向觀看。哈哈，這真是有趣的妙論呀！

人生之中，有許多「壓力、挫折」，但只要轉個念、換個角度看，它也就是我們生命中的「甜點」呀！

此外，也有人說： "人生就像一碗飯，一半是甜的，一半是苦的，你不知道會先吃到哪一邊，但終究必須把飯吃完"。是呀，生命有甜、有苦、有酸、也有辣；但都必須去經歷它、走過它呀！

有一個小學老師在偏遠的鄉里教書，這天，他來到自己班上的教室，問班上的小朋友：「你們大家有沒有討厭的人啊」。 小朋友們想了想，有的未作聲，有的則猛力地點點頭。

老師接著便發給每人一個袋子，說：「我們來玩一個遊戲。現在大家想想看，過去這一週，曾有那些人得罪過你，他到底做了怎麼樣可惡的事。想到後，就利用放學時間到河邊去找一塊石頭，把他的名字給用小紙條貼在石頭上，如果他實在很過份，你就找一塊大一點的石頭，如果他的錯是小錯，你就找一塊小一點的石頭。每天把戰利品用袋子裝到學校來給老師看哦！」

學生們感到非常有趣且新鮮，放學後，每個人都搶著到河邊去找石頭。

第二天一早，大家都把裝著從河邊撿來的鵝卵石的袋子帶到學校來，興高采烈地討論著。

一天過去了，兩天過去了，三天過去了….. ，

有的人的袋子越裝越大，幾乎成了負擔。終於，有人提出了抗議「老師，好累喔」老師笑了笑沒說話，立刻又有人接著喊："對啊,每天背著這些石頭來上課，好累喔"

這時，老師終於開口了，她笑著說：「那就放下這些代表著別人過犯的石頭吧」. 孩子們有些訝異，老師又接著講："學習寬恕別人的過犯 ，不要把它當寶一樣的記在心上，扛在肩上，時間久了，任誰也受不了…"

這個星期，這班的同學上到了人生中極寶貴的一課。袋裡裝入越多、越大的「石頭」，心中存留越多、越深的仇恨，所造成的負擔就越重。

假如你有寫上我名字的石頭 你應當知道該怎樣做了吧！

我很喜歡一句名諺：「寬恕人的過失，便是自己的榮耀。」懂得「放下」，何等自在。

請不吝分享，或許今天正有人需要它！

相愛容易相處難，婚姻與戀愛最大的不同，就是「戀愛看的是對方的優點」，而「婚姻卻是要包容對方的缺點」。緣份是找到包容你的人!

186 - Thoughts of the Day (July 17, 2010)

Always keep this in mind:
"My biggest enemy in life is none other than myself"
Constantly ask your heart: "What happens to my inner peace?"
"Why does my inner peace disappear so easily?"
"Why is it that a mere few words from people's mouth can shake-up my inner peace & trigger my emotions?"

Always be aware that:
"I am holding a COIN with two sides; one side is LOVE while the other side is FEAR. I will constantly watch my thoughts and be aware that the side representing LOVE is facing upward. And I strive to ensure my coin will NOT be upside down, causing LOVE being replaced by FEAR.

185 - Honor Her

This is a beautiful article:
The woman in your life....very well expressed...

Here is a girl, who is as much educated as you are;
Who is earning almost as much as you do;
One, who has dreams and aspirations just as you have because she is as human as you are;
One, who has never entered the kitchen in her life just like you or your sister haven't, as she was busy in studies and competing in a system that gives no special concession to girls for their culinary achievements;
One, who has lived and loved her parents & brothers & sisters, almost as much as you do for 20-25 years of her life;
One, who has bravely agreed to leave behind all that, her home, people who love her, to adopt your home, your family, your ways and even your family name;
One, who is somehow expected to be a master-chef from day #1, while you sleep oblivious to her predicament in her new circumstances, environment and that kitchen;
One, who is expected to make the tea, first thing in the morning and cook food at the end of the day, even if she is as tired as you are, maybe more, and yet never ever expected to complain; to be a servant, a cook, a mother, a wife, even if she doesn't want to; and is learning just like you are as to what you want from her; and is clumsy and sloppy at times and knows that you won't like it if she is too demanding, or if she learns faster than you;
One, who has her own set of friends, and that includes boys and even men at her workplace too, those, who she knows from school days and yet is willing to put all that on the back-burners to avoid your irrational jealousy, unnecessary competition and your inherent insecurities;
Yes, she can drink and dance just as well as you can, but won't, simply because you won't like it, even though you say otherwise;
One, who can be late from work once in a while when deadlines, just like yours, are to be met;
One, who is doing her level best and wants to make this most important relationship in her entire life a grand success, if you just help her some and trust her;
One, who just wants one thing from you, as you are the only one she knows in your entire house - your unstinted support, your sensitivities and most importantly - your understanding, or love, if you may call it.
But not many guys understand this......
Please appreciate "HER". I hope you will do....

184 - 你心中的恐懼、感傷，背後所要保護的故事是什么

Q077 問：
我自小有第六感，有時會看到或預知將會發生的事情。要怎樣才能給人相信呢？我有時會傷感，有些天災我知道，卻不能告訴人。怎麼辦呢？

若水回應：
你好，
你問了「要怎樣才能給人相信呢？」你知道嗎？即使 J 兄在《奇蹟課程》裡也只說「我的決定無法壓過你的，因為你的決定與我的一樣強而有力。」我們又怎麼可能教你「怎樣才能給人相信？」

所有關於末日、戰亂災禍的預言，最能勾出人心裡的恐懼，也許你期望《奇蹟課程》給你一點奇蹟，好讓你救多點人，做多點好事；但我得講句掃興的話：奇蹟不在於多少人被救了，在你出發踏上宣揚訊息之旅之前，別忘了正文第二章有一句話「施展奇蹟者的唯一責任即是親自接受救贖。（T-2. V. 5: 1-6）」，面對這個特殊的預言能力，以及你心中的恐懼、感傷，「你自己」才是需要親自接受救贖的那個人。

你所談的預感能力，不過重申了「心念」是有能力的，而且不受時間的限制。預知未來，和音樂天才，電腦技術，甚至煮一手好菜，都屬於一種特殊能力，本質沒有什麼差別。對心靈或修行沒有直接的關係。但是，人間的「特殊」能力在小我的陰影下，有如雙面刃，隨時都會刺傷自己。

奇蹟課程說，所有的心念只有兩個來源，一是出自「愛」，一是出自「恐懼」。出自愛的心念，會幫你由噩夢轉為美夢，出自恐懼的心念，也有能力讓你的預感「一語成讖」（self-fulfilling prophecy)。所以，不要小看了自己的念頭，常常預見災難的人，不只表示自己活在「恐懼」中（只是投射到世界去了），他的心念還同時助長了災難成真的可能性。

只需「收回投射」，與J兄一起面對內心的恐懼，或是，將此恐懼交託給聖靈，那麼「愛」的能量，就會在「恐懼」交出以後的那個空間湧出的。

這是奇蹟課程的基本原則，不論是面對什麼事件或某種能力，問題都不在外面，它只是給你一個機會去看「你究竟在怕什麼」或是「你想隱藏或防衛什麼」，才會投射出這類念頭或事件。

把你所看到的煩與亂，在適當的時刻交托給聖靈，對祂說：「現在我的心很煩亂，我勢必看走了眼，對弟兄，對世界，請祢幫助我用你的眼光來看這純潔無罪的世界吧，我願交托給祢這神聖的一天。」

你會發現，這些煩與亂，在聖靈眼中都是小事，你和祂一起看看這些「小事」，笑一笑「真傻！」就可以把它拋開，去幹聖靈的「正經事」了。

唯有你參透了這個特殊的預言能力，以及你心中的恐懼、感傷，背後所要保護的故事是什麼，從這些特殊的愛、關懷、恐懼中解放開來後，你才可能真正讓你的特殊能力發揮大用。
祝福你。
文/ 若水暨奇蹟資訊中心志工
原文於 2009/7/23 已發表於奇蹟課程中文部網站

183 - All about wife for a good laugh

When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge than to let him keep her.
Lee Majors

After marriage, husband and wife become two sides of a coin; they just can't face each other, but still they stay together.
Al Gore

By all means marry. If you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.
Socrates

Woman inspires us to great things, and prevents us from achieving them.
Mike Tyson

The great question... which I have not been able to answer... is, "What does a woman want?
George Clooney

I had some words with my wife, and she had some paragraphs with me.
Bill Clinton

"Some people ask the secret of our long marriage. We take time to go to a restaurant two times a week. A little candlelight, dinner, soft music and dancing. She goes Tuesdays, I go Fridays."
George W. Bush

"I don't worry about terrorism. I was married for two years."
Rudy Giuliani

"There's a way of transferring funds that is even faster than electronic banking. It's called marriage."
Michael Jordan

"I've had bad luck with all my wives. The first one left me and the second one didn't." The third gave me more children!
Donald Trump

Two secrets to keep your marriage brimming
1. Whenever you're wrong, admit it,
2. Whenever you're right, shut up.
Shaquille O'Neal

The most effective way to remember your wife's birthday is to forget it once...
Kobe Bryant

You know what I did before I married? Anything I wanted to.
David Hasselhoff

My wife and I were happy for twenty years. Then we met.
Alec Baldwin

A good wife always forgives her husband when she's wrong.
Barack Obama

Marriage is the only war where one sleeps with the enemy.
Tommy Lee

A man inserted an 'ad' in the classifieds: "Wife wanted". Next day he received a hundred letters. They all said the same thing: "You can have mine."
Brad Pitt

First Guy (proudly): "My wife's an angel!"
Second Guy: "You're lucky, mine's still alive."
Jimmy Kimmel

"Honey, what happened to 'ladies first'?" Husband replies, "That's the reason why the world's a mess today, because a lady went first!"
David Letterman

"First there's the promise ring, then the engagement ring, then the wedding ring...soon after....comes Suffer...ing!
Jay Leno

182 - Four Tenets

Tenet 1: Watch and feel my thoughts and emotions

Whenever I feel emotions or discomfort, I acknowledge my thoughts and emotional feeling. I don't judge my thoughts and emotions. I silently feel my thoughts and emotions until it is over and complete.

I can see my emotions as dark fluid or energy flowing out of my body until I can feel peace and ease.

Step 2: Awareness & recognizing it as projection from my mind

I recognize that my thoughts create my realities which are projected out from my mind.

I silently tell myself, "This is not real, this is illusion, being the projection of quilt from my mind."

I laugh out loud for fooling myself into believing my emotions or the stories/drama are real.

Step 3: Forgiveness

I silently forgive myself as well as the persons or events that arouse my inner guilt. I recognize that I had done it before and NOW I can understand the feeling involved!

I reclaim all my power. I tell myself: "I am the power and presence of God. I am love, I am light, I am peace and joy". I feel the power and presence of God permeate through my whole being.

Step 4: Expressing gratitude

Thank myself and those involved for making the illusion so real and fool me into believing the illusions are true. Now I can be aware of my sick mind or limiting beliefs (I am not lovable, I am not worthy, I am useless, I am powerless...) This is not sin, this is merely silly. How can God not be God?

After the above have been done, I then receive the gifts of God: Happiness, strength, peace, love, joy, abundance.

181 - Spiritual Beings

WE ARE NOT HUMAN BEINGS GOING THROUGH A TEMPORARY SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE.

WE ARE SPIRITUAL BEINGS GOING THROUGH A TEMPORARY HUMAN EXPERIENCE.

180 - Creation

Raj at Kingston -- January 21, 1998

QUESTION:

Raj, I’ve been on a spiritual path for a long time. And I followed you for a long time, but I just recently started the Course of Miracles," and I’ve run into a little snag, which I was hoping perhaps that you could shed some light on. And I’m going to read to you what the paragraph in which it appears.

It says.... Well, for one thing it is the word "create" and "creation," which they use frequently. And in the preface it states: "Truth is unalterable, eternal and unambiguous. It can be unrecognized, but it cannot be changed. It applies to everything that God created, and only what He created is real. It is beyond learning because it is beyond time and process. It has no opposite; no beginning and no end. It merely is."

Now I believe that God does not create, because if it did it would take that time and process that they talk about, and it would require a beginning. And I believe as it says there, it merely is. What is your viewpoint on that, and the use of the word "creation"?

ANSWER:

Then you have the wonderful opportunity to discover how creation occurs without time. Another word for God is "Being." And very often the word "being" relative to God is seen as a noun, but the word "being" relative to God is really a verb. God is a verb. That is why there is Life. God is the Movement of being, not the movement of a supreme being, but the movement of be-ing the verb.

Movement does not take time. Why? Because contrary to the way you are perceiving at the present time, it isn’t occurring in space. And space is the only place where time can exist. So where is life happening? It’s all happening in the conscious experience of its happening. In other words, it’s all in Mind, if you will. But Mind is God. God is Mind, God is Life, God is Truth. So the Movement of Being is the Movement of Mind. And the Movement of Mind is the experience of consciousness. And Mind does not occupy space, but it is inseparable from the experience of consciousness.

What is there for consciousness to be conscious of? Only itself, because it is the presence that is God, it is the Movement of Being.

The Movement is infinite, therefore there is no place for the Movement to go. And yet the experience of being occurs. Time has nothing to do with it, space has nothing to do with it. And truly the process of awakening involves making a shift from the perception of things—which are really ideas experienced in mind—it is the shifting from the perception of things in space to the experience of them being the inseparable presence of you. And to make that more meaningful, or shall I say more relevant, when you wake up, or as you become more and more clearly awake, you will begin to recognize yourself in everything. You will see it and you will say, "Ahh, it’s just like me." In other words, there is nothing about it that is foreign or at odds with you.

Right now you all have experiences of seeing something and recognizing its beauty immediately. There’s just no question about its being beautiful. This experience of beauty is an experience of recognizing yourself in that thing. In other words, there is nothing about the beauty of that thing which is at odds with your ability to recognize beauty.

Now that’s just an example of what I mean when I say you will say, "it’s just like me," except as you wake up it will be more than the recognition of beauty. It is as though every constituent part of that thing, whether it’s the view out the window, or an object that is smaller in your hand. It will be a recognition that every constituent part of what you are seeing, whether it’s water, whether it’s land, whether it’s trees that have pine needles and leaves and bark and ants crawling up, all the constituent parts of what you see are just like you. In other words, are not in any way unrecognizable to you as that which is completely in harmony with who and what you are at the very depth of your being. These are inadequate words that I am using to express the wholeness of the experience, but they express the feeling and convey the idea.

You will be aware not just at an overall whole view, but of every constituent part of what is there. And you will recognize yourself in it—it’s just like you, or you are just like it. There is nothing out of sync in any way.

Now this experience still leaves everything appearing to be in space with the mountains across the water, and trees on the mountains, and snow on the mountains, etc., with other things closer to you. But space does not remain a factor that is relevant to you. Because you know what? The apparent space between you and those things, and the apparent space between the ants and the needles on the trees and the bark, etc., the very space is just like you. It is a constituent part of the conscious experience you are having.

And so the experience of Life becomes integrated, unified, one and it’s just like you and you’re just like it. But everything’s sill apparently is not all jumbled together into an undistinguishable ball of infinite manifestation of God. You see. In this recognition of yourself, it becomes obvious that it’s all a conscious experience, which in itself involves no time, and involves no space.

But nevertheless, what is being experienced moves because Mind, you might say in the act of being conscious of itself moves and is experienced as something by itself. And that self is you and that self is the needle on the tree and it is the space in between, and yet none of it is segregate or separate from anything else. It takes infinity for that which is timeless and spaceless to be fully realized, or to be realizing itself forever.

So I encourage you to begin to consider creation as something that does occur, but something which does not bring into play time and space and does not take time and space in which to occur. And then as you look at everything, begin to let loose of the sense of time and space to what you are seeing and remember that it is a conscious experience that you are having.

And if it is a conscious experience that you are having it must necessarily be an experience of God, even if you have some misinterpretations involved. And then become curious to see God in the Movement that seems to be taking time and have the sense of time that’s involved disappear out of the picture.

There you go, that is something you can be curious about. That is something you can play with, as I said earlier, "what if, what if there is no space to this experience of a world I’m having? What if there is no time to the experience of this world I’m seeing?" Ah! Hey, play with that if you want to learn to teleport. Play with that so that you can play with teleportation. Does that answer your question?

179 - Addictions

QUESTION:

My question is on addictions, and mainly because I’ve got them and everybody I know has got one or two or three or whatever.

And I’m talking about addictions like smoking, cigarettes or marijuana or harder drugs, drinking, eating, gambling, whatever. I realize that we have addictions to suppress things we can’t cope with, memories from the past. And if we could face them then we wouldn’t need our addictions.

Why is it so hard for humanity? And what is the key to healing that? I mean even people on the spiritual path have also still got their addictions.

ANSWER:

You are only ever addicted to that which will cover up your uneasiness, your being out of peace. And what causes you to feel out of your peace is not experiencing your wholeness.

Again, it is the attempt to get rid of the bell that is ringing on the truck that is backing up!

Now, if you want to deal with your addictions, don’t deal with your addictions - address your peace. Make the conscious choice for your peace more consistently.

When you are in your peace, you experience absolutely no call for defense, because you feel no vulnerability.

“Yes, but I have meditated and I still find I need the cigarette or I still want to get up and have a chocolate eclair,” or whatever.

Well, I will tell you that it is very important for you to know something that I shared yesterday, and that is: when you become still, when you yield up control and relax into your peace it isn’t just an absence of anxiety, of nerves. It isn’t that your body has simply, for a time, relaxed. This experience of peace is a direct connection with your capital “S” Self, your essential Being, the nature of which is immoveable peace - unchanging peace.

Your very practice of meditation is proof that whenever you choose to abandon anxiety and move into your peace, it is there. What you are not clear on is the fact that you didn’t create the peace by means of your meditation. The practice of meditation simply allowed you to move into that place within yourself where your peace is unalterably, unchangeably, eternally present.

So when you do take steps to become still and you do experience your peace, I want you to start paying attention to it as though it is a direct experience of your divinity and not just a physical absence of tension. And as you begin to pay attention to it as an actual experience of what you divinely are, the experience of your peace will begin to enlarge and more meaning will come into play in you.

Eating, smoking, any of your addictions are defenses against being uncomfortable. But they are steps taken at an ego level to address an ego experience and they will forever not solve the problem. The only thing that will solve the problem is the experience of the real peace of your Being, which is available to every single one of you at every moment.

In your peace you begin to experience equilibrium, balance. Anxiety is when you are out of balance. And this balance, when you are experiencing it, is unlimited. There simply is an awareness of being big, is the only way I can put it. And so this balance is a huge balance. So huge that it’s obvious to you that there could be nothing to actually unsettle it.

I will tell you one of the reasons that it is so important to meditate - or in Biblical terms, to go into your closet and pray unto the Father which is in secret, or which is in the silence - one of the greatest reasons for doing that is not the immediate reduction of tension or anxiety, but the fact that you get, shall I say, on a regular basis an experience of your divine Self, not as a concept or an idea, but as an actual experience. And if you do it regularly, this experience of who you are and what your nature is becomes more familiar to you. And the more familiar it becomes to you, the more you will spontaneously make a choice for it.

Now I would encourage all of you to not think of your addictions in terms of levels of seriousness. Addiction is addiction. Addiction is a compulsive grab for whatever will cover up your experience of imbalance, without correcting the imbalance. It is the ignorance, it is the absence of the experience of your peace that causes you to take steps to atone for it by insulating yourself against it, which really doesn’t constitute atonement.

Everyone’s attempt to succeed in life against the odds is an addiction. And it is no less or more morally judgeable than addiction to a drug.

Indeed, everything that I have been sharing with you today, yesterday and will be sharing with you tomorrow, is directed at uncovering to you your innocence and your fundamental nature so that you might consciously choose for it, rather than choosing for that which blocks your experience of it and seems to provide you with insulation against your discomfort.

Addiction to the challenge of life... Life isn’t a challenge. Life is an unfoldment. Life is a Movement. And at the bottom line, it is a Movement of Conscious Awareness. And you are not experiencing it as the Movement of the Conscious Awareness that you are, because you are presently identifying with a small portion of the infinity of you called your body and your own little mind, that seems to be in the middle of and subject to this Movement.

At the bottom line: All of you are addicted to escaping yourself; escaping the infinity of you that is inseparable from the presence of the Movement of God called Creation.

So now, does that mean that you stop condemning the ones that are addicted to drugs and you get on your own case? No. Let-go of the judgment, and begin to consciously choose for your peace, even if it means that you are meditating only twice a day for twenty minutes, or once a day for twenty minutes. The point is to begin on a somewhat regular basis to provide yourself with the experience of your peace; because that is the first step of the experience of your wholeness, of your balance or equilibrium, in which there is nothing present to insulate yourself from. And, therefore, nothing compelling you to grab for relief.

So everyone is in the same boat. And everyone, no matter what the name on that boat is, is worthy of getting out of that boat. And you get out of that boat by daring to begin to have a different view of who and what you are. And the easiest way to peg who you really are is to use the word divine. Because the divine has no dualistic or negative connotations to it, except that you think that being divine will mean you won’t be too popular. “Nobody likes a nice guy,” the saying goes.

But to experience your divinity is to experience your integrity. And to experience your integrity means there is no experience in you that feels like holding itself back—being a wall flower, being shy. And so you make the gift of you, in any circumstance, more easily.

The answer to your question is that your release from addiction comes from the experience of your peace. And so your peace and a consistent experience of it is what is called for. You can delve into all of the psychological reasons that you can find within yourself, but that is not going to solve the problem. Without understanding what all the psychological motivators are for your addiction, you CAN choose for your peace and practice it by praying in the sense of going into the silence within you and desiring of God to be filled with the clear experience of who you are.

And as I said, in the midst of the experience of the equilibrium of your divine Being, the so called psychological triggers to your addictions, even if they don’t dissolve, will not trigger anything anymore. And in not triggering anything anymore, they will dissolve.

So I encourage all of you, relative to your addictions, not to set up a task for yourself of self-analysis, which because of the great complexity of your psyche is necessarily going to take a long time before you can reach that peace of mind that would allow you to wake up. Just begin to value your peace.

And as I said, remember the experience of your peace is not just the absence of physical anxiety, it is a direct, real experience of your essential capital “B” Being - your divine Self. And that realization will allow for an embellishment, an expansion of the meaning of the peace of your Being and your clearer experience of who you really Are, right here, right now, without dying and going to Heaven.

Now, you thought I was finished. Connected with the release of any addiction is necessarily a subject of forgiveness. Forgiveness can become a lengthy complicated process - another time consumer. And what you need to know is that indeed when you come into the direct experience of the peace of your being it is impossible for you to hold a grudge, and forgiveness happens spontaneously.

I realize that it sounds like I’m taking all of the fun work out of getting better. After all, there would have been some satisfaction to have worked your way through your problems and solved them. You could give yourself a pat on the back. It’s just another way the ego has of keeping you preoccupied from actually waking up for a little bit more time.

And you know what? Most of what I am saying to you, at one time or another you have had an experience of. You have had an experience of peace, where your concerns were absent, your anxieties were absent, and you had a clarity about you that allowed you to act or behave appropriately. But you thought it was a transcendental, temporary experience—a glimpse of how it will be at another time and another place. When actually what happened was, you became defenseless enough for a long enough moment to have a Real experience of being in the NOW. That’s the fact!

And the lesson of it is that at any moment or for consecutive moments if you allow yourself to be defenseless, that will be your experience without having to GRO-O-O-OW into it, DE-VEL-L-L-OP into it, IMPR-O-O-VE into it. “Father, I didn’t do anything.” No, you just let, you just let it happen and it happened. No, it’s not very satisfying to the ego, “can’t take credit for it.”

Who cares whether you can take credit for it if you’re experiencing it, and if what you are experiencing is you in full embrace of your Sanity experiencing your Wholeness.

Again, this improvement, this development, is all part of addiction. Climbing up from the bottom of the barrel—boy, wait till you can tell everybody that you got to the top. Why not cut a hole in the bottom and fall through.

Getting in touch with your Being is like allowing yourself to be at the bottom of the barrel and giving up. Because what you’re giving up is the addiction. The addiction to being successful in a frame of mind that is not natural to you.

I am very glad you asked the question.

QUESTION:

I have a personal question it’s in relation to my relationship with my husband. He’s a very creative person, but is not expressing himself because he’s a teacher and finds it difficult to be creative outside of the teaching experience. He’s also alcohol dependent.

And my questions is about alcoholism, I can’t understand it. And I can’t understand the nature of his search.

ANSWER:

I will tell you that the alcoholism is a means of avoiding the search. It is a means of withdrawing into a false sense of safety, but one which feels safe.

Now there are two things you need to know. First of all, it is not appropriate for you to be tolerant of the alcohol dependency. It is important for you to stand firm in disagreement with it, and further be present as the call for action, if you will, on his part to do something about it. You are not to join him in his ignorance,let us say, and be tolerant of it.

Now, if everyone around him simply closes their eyes and expresses what many people call unconditional love, which means not expressing any intelligence at all, then all of you will be joining him in his ignorance. And it is not unkind for you to be the presence of intelligence actively expressing itself.

Now if you simply say, “this is intolerable, this is not intelligent,” and you leave it as that, it is most definitely going to come across as criticism and judgment, and there will be resentment to it. But if you say, “this is intolerable, this is unintelligent, and we must replace it with something that is intelligent, that steps must be taken that help uncover your capacity to be independent and to also be safe,” then that cannot be taken as easily as though it were a criticism.

Because you are saying there is something needing to be dealt with, and there is a way to deal with it.

And you must be willing to push for his integrity. He will at times interpret that as your being a demanding wife. But what you will be being is the active presence of intelligence that says there is a solution to this. And it constitutes a vote of confidence in his being able to move into that experience of his integrity. You are saying, “I see that you have integrity in spite of what you are doing. And I demand to see that integrity expressed. I am calling it forth. I want to see it. I am not going to agree to your covering it up, because it isn’t the truth about you. Let’s do something about it.”

Now that’s the first thing for you to know. The second thing for you to realize is what I talked about yesterday, that every single one of you are afraid of your good, are afraid of waking up because you are afraid that it will cost you something.

I’m going to express this idea in a slightly different way: Many of you do not want to know the truth because you are afraid that the truth will condemn you, that it will uncover your faults and your flaws and then you will just be stuck with them. Well I will tell you something, the nature of truth is love. And truth uncovers the illusory nature of the flaws that your ego has told you you have.

Nevertheless, every single one of you is afraid of truth, is afraid of unconditional love being given to you, is afraid of your conscious experience of Reality, is afraid to experience your Christhood. You say you want it, but when you come right down to the actual possibility of experiencing it I will guaranty you you will wonder if it will not bring you a great deal of responsibility that you don’t really want. Or that it will require of you what you don’t have the capacity to give. Everyone is afraid of their good and that is why it is held at arms length to one degree or another.

And so understand that your husband is hiding, is moving into a safe place, because he is afraid of his good, and he is afraid that his good will uncover how bad he is. It is understandable that he is withdrawing from his conscious experience of his independence, because the ego has fooled him into thinking that it will cost him something valuable - his safety in this case - if indeed he takes hold of his independence and his integrity.

So understand that he is not in a worse position than you are, and you are not in a better position than he is, you are both standing at the threshold of being willing to embrace your good and discover that it will not condemn and convict you and thereby put you in the position of having to pay penance. In other words, pay the price and suffer.

The nature of truth is love. And the effect of love is to uncover and illuminate the fact that what the ego has called your faults are illusions, not to be validated, and not to be hidden from. You don’t have to be afraid to have nothing uncovered. And yet, all of you are afraid that the somethingness that the ego has painted you with is real, and that in the illumination of love and truth your ugliness, your terribleness, your worthlessness will show up like a sore thumb.

But the fact is that in the illumination and truth and love your flawlessness, your innocence, your perfection becomes illuminated to you. And it is such a relief.

So at the same time that you recognize that it is understandable that he is taking the steps that he is taking you also must not play into it or validate it. You must see that you are not in a position of judging him, because he is suffering from ignorance just as you are. But then you must make a stand for what he divinely is, just as you must make a stand for what you divinely are. And say, “I will not play into or validate by my silence your ignorance, and this unintelligent way to access safety.”

Now love yourself and then love him in that order. And love yourself by being willing to claim your right to experience intelligence and order and comfort and an absence of fear in your experience. And then love him. And love him by eliciting from him the clearer expression of intelligence.

To be blunt with you, demand it from him. You are demanding that the truth of him come forth and no longer be hidden.

This can be done lovingly. But it must be done firmly. And if you are acknowledging his divinity, his Christhood, right there as the super imposition of the ego seems to obscure it, then you will be able to make the demand without judging him.

And he will be able to more easily hear it as a call for his Christhood, as a call for his essential value and worth. And he will be likely to hear it as a vote of confidence that indeed he has it, even though his ego has fooled him into thinking he doesn’t.

You are calling forth the Christ of him. And one does not call forth the Christ of another with judgment or anger or frustration, but with a clear sense that it is there, and a clear expectation that it will come forth because it is what is Real.

Do not any longer be silent and allow dependency to be his mode of operation. You are not there to change him. But you are there to be, as I said earlier, the light. You are there to be the truth. You are there to be the intelligence. And intelligence calls forth intelligence. Intelligence does not support even by silence non-intelligence.

The ego imposes upon you an illegitimate and false sense of existence. And you in your way, and he in his way are suffering from that imposition. And you are both deserving of being free of it. And that is the basis upon which you call for a change. It is from a standpoint of compassion but not agreement.

He is worthy of being free of it, and that is why you are calling for him to be free of it. And as long as his worthiness of freedom stays foremost in your mind, your firm demand will be expressed without judgment that would turn him away.

Like the one lost sheep he is worthy of saving just as you are, with an awareness that that sheep deserves to be in the company of the rest of the flock. And if you approach him from the standpoint of his worthiness, headway will be made. That’s the end of the answer.