Our Tool Chest: Meditation, Yoga, Affirmations

“The word “need” and the word “dependent” are only words and words that would be inconceivable to you in the state of unity before you left it. Now, they are just tools, as are many other means of practice that assist you in bypassing your ego mind. Some practices more commonly thought of as tools might be meditation, exercises of the body such as yoga, or exercises of the mind such as affirmations. These tools are all means of releasing ego mind and inviting the one mind, or unity into the present moment. When seen as such, all these tools, including needs, can ignite the combination of learning and unlearning, the letting-go of one so that the other can arrive.” (ACOL, T2:9.2)

A Course of Love says that we need to return to unity, and this unity is of two types: a union with the Self, and a union of mind and heart to form wholeheartedness. Here, in the passage, we see that we are not left to make this unity come about out of thin air. There are tools, and implicit in giving us these tools, Jesus is asking that we use them—meditation, yoga, affirmations. Add to that the understanding that our needs are met at the point of recognition, and that we are one with all in interdependence, and we have quite a tool chest to draw upon. Our way home is clear; it is only our density of thought that holds us back. And our patience; we lack the patience to really work on ourselves. So we ask for the miracle that the art of thought really is; we ask for the patience to wait on God’s timing for our enlightenment. And we try out these tools as a way to remove barriers to the blessing of ultimate salvation that we really want.

This passage also reminds us that learning and unlearning appear together, one simultaneous effect of walking the right pathway. We are fast moving into the time when learning from authorities of the past is no longer recommended. Our lives, instead, are the fodder for release from egoic ideas. A way out of our insanity. We observe what happens in our lives, and this edges us forward, day by day, ever so slightly. In patience possess ye your souls, as we have heard. This observation of our lives and what happens in them is the tailor-made tool for undoing the ego. We unlearn the insanity (though this sounds hard to do), and in the unlearning, we are, at the same time, learning anew. Everybody has a different curriculum, one suited just for each of us. Our learning goals are the same, though: a return to the Christ Self, a joining of heart and mind. So, when we talk to others, we find that their pathway is similar to ours; just the details differ, for nobody else lives the same life, knows the same thing, or anticipates a like future.

We are encouraged to live in the present moment. This always sounds hard to us, for most of us have tried it, and failed. But we try again, and gradually longer and longer periods are actually attuned to the gift of the present. We see no reason to wander in the madness of the past, or to worry about the happenings of the future. We know that we are safe in the present, and in this truth, our self-fostered disinterest in remaining in the present just disappears.

Try some of the tools that Jesus gives in this passage for today. Let those tools lead the way. We want to turn aside from the ego, and time-tested remedies are always the best. Certainly meditation, yoga, and affirmations are well-known to most of us. They may have failed us in the past. But this is a new day, and there is hope for a better outcome, because the ego’s hold on us, for all of us, has been weakened.

Try Jesus’s tools a little right now. The benefits are there, when the mind and heart work together to heal the division between God and our persona.

Prayer

Many of us have long used the tools that Jesus point out today. But I am in a new era now, and though I might have had limited success with meditation, yoga, affirmations, in the past, I have no reason to believe that things won’t take a turn for the better. It is reassuring to know that this tool chest is familiar to me. It is familiar to many of us, and this very familiarity is a comfort. Thank You.

I would seek to walk the straight and narrow with ease today. I would not fear the ego, for Jesus tells me that it is gone. I seek to love, and in the love I find myself.

It is this way for everybody.

Amen.

Tending Your Garden

“This holy relationship is what you are called to cultivate as a gardener cultivates her garden. The gardener knows that although the plant exists fully realized within its seed, it also needs the relationship of earth and water, light and air. The gardener knows that tending the garden will help it to flourish and show its abundance. The gardener knows she is part of the relationship that is the garden. (Treatises of A Course of Love: Treatise on the Nature of Unity and Its Recognition, 12.10)”

Affirmation: “I will spend time tending my garden today.”

Reflections:

1 – Holy Relationship

The holy relationship is a relationship not only with others, but also with the Self. We reach inwardly and outwardly. And we tend what we find there. What exactly do we do?

2 – Meditative Work

There are ways that we can enhance our relationship to our Self as well as with our brothers and sisters. Earlier, Jesus mentioned meditation, yoga, affirmations as ways to grow in grace (though he did not use that term “grace”). Tending the garden is an ongoing process that in itself is meditative. Think of the gardener who loves the work of a physical garden. Do he/she not feel rejuvenated by the work that is done in the garden? It is the same here in the realm of the mind and heart, the wholeheartedness that Jesus has set forth. We do not struggle to tend. We just relax in the meditative expanse of our days.

3 – Ego

The ego would try to tend the plants without relationship (from ACOL). The ego would believe that relationship is not primary, and that the personal self is all that is important. When we are selfishly hung up on the ego, we are not mindful of our Self or of others. Sometimes someone will wonder if we actually “like” people, perhaps including ourselves. We may be so hung up on personal problems that we think that the only one we can care about is ourselves: It is enough just to keep ourselves going, and we can’t mind other people as well. They are seen as a distraction.

4 – Special Relationships

This set of mind, that relationship is unneeded and even impossible, given our state of mind, is just where the ego would have us be. The ego thinks that holy relationships, especially, are beside the point. The only relationship which the ego thinks of any benefit to the personal self is the special relationship. And we know where this leads. To pain and sometimes suffering.

5 – Special into Holy Relationships

But when we turn our special relationships into holy ones, we tend our garden in the process. This metaphor of the garden is particularly dear to the heart of Jesus, we must intuit. Later on, in the Dialogues of A Course of Love, he devotes a whole chapter to the concept. Here he is just getting started with the topic.

6 – Neurosis

Try to think today of ways that you can leave neurosis behind, and with neurosis, the ego. Try to become acquainted with the Self today. Leave time for others, for the holy relationships that we are developing with our brothers and sisters. The time of today will be well spent, and we will have followed Jesus’s advice to tend our garden.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I would tend my garden today, especially my relationship to my Self and my significant others. If others are stressed, I would remain calm, secure in the Self, leaving the ego behind. Help me especially to be patient today.

This day can go smoothly if I remember You. You are my Rock, my assurance that what I do with Your blessing will turn out alright.

Help me to think and to do with Your blessing today.

Amen

Meditation / Yoga / Affirmations

“Some practices more commonly thought of as tools might be meditation, exercises of the body such as yoga, or exercises of the mind such as affirmations. These tools are all means of releasing ego mind and inviting the one mind, or unity into the present moment. When seen as such, all these tools, including needs, can ignite the combination of learning and unlearning, the letting go of one so that the other can arrive. (Treatises of A Course of Love: Treatise on the Nature of Unity and Its Recognition, 9.2)”

Affirmation: “I will let go of the ego so that the Self can step forward.”

Reflections:

1 – Practices

The practices mentioned in A Course of Love, in this passage, are not mentioned in A Course in Miracles, though the final lessons in the Workbook are thought by some students/teachers to be meditative in approach. Here Jesus names the practices that will undo the learning that we have obtained heretofore, leaving us free to welcome the Self/Christ.

2 – Present Moment

We are asked to think of the present moment, an assertion that many, many spiritual practices have recommended. We release the ego mind in the present, so that we know unity–with Self as well as others. The unity is one of unity in relationship, the One reaching out to the many, and “unity and relationship” are hallmarks of ACOL.

3 – Meditation

I practiced meditation three times a day for years for 30 minutes each time. I was deep into my career of librarianship, and the work could be and often was, stressful, and this despite most people’s assumptions that libraries are stress-free environments. But I am no longer a librarian, and in recent years I have not kept up the practice of meditation. This ought to be changed in me. Meditation is enormously comforting and calming to the emotions, and the insight that comes as a result can sometimes be profound. All practitioners say the same.

4 – Yoga

I now practice yoga most mornings, first thing in the morning. I have a meditative routine that stills my mind and prepares me for the day, and I keep at it for about 20 to 30 minutes. The day gets started right, and, perhaps, in a way, this is a form of meditation for me now.

5 – Affirmations

And affirmations are particularly helpful when I am stressed. Norman Vincent Peale often recommended this form of learning. And he prepared compilations of biblical passages that are particularly well-suited to being converted to affirmations. One favorite is entitled, “Thought Conditioners.”

6 – Turn Aside from the Ego

We need to make a concerted effort to avoid egotistical thinking and actions. This is easily done if we catch ourselves in the moment and turn aside, not to resist but simply to make another choice. And in the unity that we will know when we are living in an egoless way will much understanding come to us.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I would choose today to practice all three of the learning techniques mentioned herein–meditation, yoga, and affirmations. I will be the better for it. No effort need be involved. I just drop the ego and decide to follow established practices that will better my mind.

Thank You for the sense of Your presence that I enjoy. I am desirous of enlarging the number of moments during the day that I sense Your presence, and I ask that You stay with me, not withdrawing and leading me into a dark night of the soul.

Amen

What Would Love Have Me Say?

“That Source is Love, and it is available in every situation but for the asking:  What would love have me do?  What would love have me see?  What would love have me say?  (A Course of Love, 32.2)”

Affirmation:  “I would choose Love consistently today.”

Reflections:

1 – God = Love

Love is not just an emotion.  As we know, Love is another Name for God, another name for the Divine.  We do not understand this mystery in our minds, but our hearts do understand, and it is our hearts that A Course of Love frequently appeals.  And when we join mind to heart, we have the wholeheartedness that is required of us by ACOL.

2 – Akin to ACIM

This series of questions in today’s passage are reminiscent of year another series of questions, along the same lines, from A Course in Miracles.  But in ACIM, we are bade to ask these questions of the Holy Spirit.  And here the three questions are bade of love, another way of viewing emotion in the heart.  So Love does partake of emotion.

3 – Certainty

We can know certainty, when we look within and see no lack.  We respond in Love, and then we know what to say, do, and even think.  There is no confusion on this point.

4 – Look Within

This indeed is the certainty that this world has lacked heretofore, and the certainty that we have craved.  As previously noted in A Course of Love, we have looked to this certainty in our relationships, where it cannot be found.  But when we look within, lo, there it is indeed.  And our words, actions, and thoughts smooth out so that we attract all that is right and good in our world.

5 – Law of Attraction

Much has been written about the law of attraction, in which like attracts like, and we can have anything in our world if we realize that we “create our own reality.”  Many have found that this practice of thinking and making affirmations does not always work as promised.  That is because we are trying to make a formula of God, and He will not be pigeonholed that way.  We cannot carry God in our hip pocket, as my freshman professor of religion warned us in class one day.  God is too big to be manipulated by our mere words.  Even our feelings are not enough, for this is simply the wrong way to get what we want.  We may succeed for a time, but all will turn to ashes and dust in our hands if we do not place the Divine at the center of our lives.  He is the only certainty in our changing and unstable world.

6 – Will All Go Smoothly for Us?

God does not give guarantees that all will always go smoothly for us.  It is certain that following a faith will make us happier and more joyous, but we will always have difficulties, for difficulties are part of the human condition.   These difficulties will not seem so onerous, though, when we know that there are higher laws of which we know nothing.  God has not revealed all of his secrets to our limited minds and hearts.  We could not sustain these secrets if He tried, and so He gives us only what we are ready to have, and this is not always the same as our heartfelt wishes.  Having all that we want would not always be good for us, for often, in our frailty, we ask for the wrong things.  And he protects us from ourselves in such cases.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

Help me to choose what Love would do, say, and even think.  This is asking of You what You would have me do, say, and think.  There is no formula that would make of You a genie in a bottle.  You do not respond in the affirmative to our every affirmation, even the ones that we seek to “allow.”  You are too big for that.  You are also too caring of us, for sometimes we ask awry.  We ask for what would not be good for us.

I would ask today only for what is right and good in Your sight.  Then and only then am I certain of getting what I have asked for.  Thank You that this, in my interpretation, seems true in my experience.  Anything else smacks of a pact with the devil (i.e., the ego).

Amen.