We Choose Our Experiences

“Just as you would go to a grocery store and choose what you will have for dinner and then go home and experience your creation so too do you choose each experience. When you choose a perception, you lodge it in the mind. Then it expresses itself through the body, through the environment that you create around yourself and through the friends that you would call into your awareness. Every aspect of the life you live is the symbol of what you have chosen to experience and, therefore, to convey throughout creation.” (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Chapter 2, Page 13)

Jesus seems here, almost certainly, to be saying that we create our own reality. This is a maxim of the New Age movement, made popular by Jane Roberts’ Seth, about the time that A Course in Miracles was being scribed. We surround ourselves with what we want, though if we are in need, it isn’t our personalities or personas that has made the lack, but our souls. Our soul knows the full chart of our life plan. Our soul then conveys to the learning being, also called the Self, or the Christ-Self (from A Course of Love) what we need to know. We will never, on earth, find a reason for lack/suffering/pain that will satisfy us, we can rest easy that there is an Answer, but that we are simply not enlightened enough to comprehend this eternal question.

We create the environment around us. We project from within, and from this a perception of the world arises. Elsewhere The Way of Mastery (the Christ-Mind Trilogy) and A Course in Miracles say that this world is an illusion of a real world. Some readers of A Course of Love demur from this interpretation, seeing in the true reality beyond Awakening or Christ-consciousness, a hope that something more is going on, that the rocks, trees, oceans, are becoming real in a new way.

We do not have to bear this cross. We do not have to join in this controversy. I don’t think that this particular problem, a matter of metaphysics, matters to Jesus at all. I think it simply doesn’t matter to him that we have differing views. Certainly physical reality is real enough to us here in our time on earth. We can debate metaphysical ideas on the Other Side, where we will presumably know more than it is given us to know in this plane.

It is enough that we create our own reality. This will be hard enough for us to handle. Remember that one is meant to have compassion on suffering, not increase it by blame of the one suffering. While there are no true victims, we are simply not astute enough to avoid blaming the victim, unless we hold them in the same love-filled vision that Jesus would.

Use our imagination to create a better reality for us. Use our imagination to realize that Jesus is right by our side, holding our hand, as we walk through this world. His help will give us a warmth and peace that we have heretofore lacked.

Beloved of God

“Understand well, The Way of the Heart requires that you allow yourself to rest in the simplicity of this truth:
“I am pure Spirit, undefiled and unaffected by anything or anyone. I am given full power to choose and therefore, to create my experience as I would have it be.” (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Chapter 2, Page 10 – 11)

We are, of course, both human and divine—but the Spirit rules, and that is what Jesus means in this quotation. Our essence is Spirit, energy, and the energy has only coalesced into a slower form that we call “matter.” It is still pure Energy, without form and spread out upon the cosmos in a way that we cannot discern. Our Spirit is like a hologram, where each Part is cognizant of the Whole, Who is God. We just don’t know it when we are encased in bodies. Intuition is our only link with the Divine.

Yet we retain power, and part of that power is the wherewithal to create what we will in our everyday life. Of course, there is a delay in what we create, for matter is slowed down energy, and since we are caught in time and space, it takes time and space to create something out of whole cloth.

We CAN create our own experience, though we are bade not to “blame the victim” if it seems that someone has created a bad situation. The personality did not do that creating; it was on the soul level, and the soul knows the essence of suffering in a way that we do not. We can never, in this world, understand the “way” of suffering. We can, though, turn our pain (inescapable for everyone) into something that blesses us.

Rest in the knowledge that by our thoughts and feelings, our focus, we create what is ahead for us in time.

This truth gives us great power. Let us use that power today.

How Should the Teacher of God Spend His Day?

“Broadly speaking, then, it can be said that it is well to start the day right. It is always possible to begin again, should the day begin with error. Yet there are obvious advantages in terms of saving time. (M-16.2)”

1 – The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne

This passage from A Course in Miracles is echoed in the popular book The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne. There is detailed the fact that stumbling when getting out of bed often starts a chain reaction, because we rue the beginning of the day, our thoughts turn negative, and then a little bit of everything seems to go wrong.

2 – We Create Our Own Reality

The Secret affirms that we create our own reality, we draw to us that which happens to us. And the work includes many examples of how better things, particularly material things, can come to us when we image those better things in our minds, affirming that our minds are very powerful.

3 – Positive Thinking

I recommend positive thinking on getting out of bed in the morning. I believe that the intangibles are more to be desired than the ego-oriented material aspects of our world. I also believe that we will never remain satisfied, regardless of how many material things we acquire, if we don’t have a handle on these intangibles of peace, joy, contentment, harmony, and the like. In my spiritual orientation, these intangibles are the blessings of God. And we can create these in our reality as well. These spiritual aspects are emphasized in two later books by Rhonda, entitled The Power and The Magic. In these two books, she focuses on the importance of gratitude and the importance of love in creating our reality.

4 – If the Day Begins Badly. . .

If the day begins badly, if we stump our toe, for example, we need a quick restorative. And this can come through The Secret’s emphasis on gratitude in daily life, which certainly is a spiritual concept.

5 – Gratitude

Gratitude expressed throughout a day is a day well spent.

6 – No Planning Necessary

The lesson for today from the Workbook of A Course in Miracles goes on to affirm that we do not need to plan our day. This is something that I especially need to hear, maker of “to do” lists that I am. It is true that we need a plan, but that plan is best, according to ACIM, the plan of the Holy Spirit, who will prompt us at various junctures about what to do next. This idea of guidance is not well-recognized in our world, and that is such a pity. Anyone who has met the Holy Spirit knows that He will guide us to the degree that we are open to His guidance. He will develop a flow to our day, and the day will indeed be marvelous, even if bad things happen. We will be largely impervious to those bad things, seeing them but not being intimately damaged by what we view.

7 – Offer Solace

We do need to offer solace to our brothers and sisters on this earth, though, especially if they are creating a reality that is detrimental to their well-being.

8 – Blaming the Victim

I do have a cautionary note. We all too often, in New Age circles, think that the individual who is suffering has somehow brought this suffering on themselves. But I believe that it is the Self that makes these decisions, not the personal self. And so the “little I” is innocent of the bad that seems to follow us into this world. The Self that is within, the Christ within, selects happenings that are intended to broaden our perspective. We sometimes suffer for a larger purpose. But it doesn’t have to be this way, and as soon as we ask for surcease, we are released from the pain. The physical and emotional pain may not subside immediately, of course, but the way has been paved. And the Self always has our best interests at heart. We can ask, as Jesus in the Text of ACIM recommends, that we learn through rewards, a more lasting learning experience than anything that pain can bring us.

9 – You Do Not Have to Learn through Pain

“You do not have to learn through pain,” we learn in ACIM. What a blessing this assertion really is. And all we have to do to merit this end is to step forward and claim it.

Affirmation: “I am going to do what I can to have a good day today.”

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

May this day go well. I am starting over, because already there has been some stress in my day, self-generated. I know that getting a slower start in the morning is good. And I know that when I get that slower start, the rest of the day falls in place.

May I have Your guidance to create my reality. I know that Your blessings are intangibles, though You know that we need the material also. I especially pray for peace in this sometimes difficult world. May my brothers and sisters, as well as myself, live in harmony with each other.

Amen.

Do Nothing to Reinforce Suffering

“Why think you it is loving to believe in suffering? Do you not begin to see that in so doing you but reinforce it? What you might even call the ‘fact’ of it? Can you not instead ask yourself what harm could be done by offering a new kind of observance? (Treatises of A Course of Love: Treatise on the Personal Self, 29.8)”

Affirmation: “I would lay all belief about suffering aside today.”

Reflections:

1 – We Create Our Own Reality

This passage for today is another example of the truth that we create our own reality. When we give attention to suffering, even when we are sympathizing with those who are suffering, we are causing that suffering to grow. When we turn aside from suffering, we diminish suffering. We fail to reinforce it, and it falls away of its own weight.

2 – Solace

Can we really believe this? Let’s try it and see. This approach does not mean that we will be cruel to those who believe in suffering and who are in the midst of suffering. We would empathize and give solace to such a person. But we won’t exacerbate the phenomenon of suffering by focusing on it, because focusing on it in fact does reinforce, and therefore make it harder to overlook.

3 – Overlooking

We saw this dynamic in the example of anger and attack. When we focused on our brother’s shortcomings (as we perceived them), they grew in our minds and we could not easily overlook them. Yet this overlooking is just what we are called to do in A Course in Miracles. We make real the anger and attack, and then we really cannot overlook it. And we are trapped by our own negative emotional reaction.

4 – Real Suffering

It is similar with suffering, and real suffering (as opposed to pain) is primarily mental, emotional. We build on the pain that we see, and this makes the primacy of negative response. We do no one any good by commiserating loudly. This simply makes the suffering real in our perception and makes it harder to overlook, as we have said.

5 – A Disservice

So today do not lend your emotional upset to the upset that you see in another who is suffering. Do not be unmindful of what you are seeing, but neither exacerbate the feelings by focusing on them. To do so is to do a disservice to your brother or sister, lost in the moment in suffering.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

When I see suffering today, I will offer my sympathy to the other, but I will not focus on that suffering and therefore make it greater. I will not reinforce, but instead turn another’s focus outward and away from the emotional turmoil that he/she is generating. I will offer solace, but not make the suffering larger by focusing on it unduly.

This are lofty ideals. There is a fine line between offering solace and perpetuating the suffering by focusing on it. Help me to know and to carry out the difference. My thoughts are with You as I go about my day, seeing some who suffer. May their suffering be eased into simply pain, or even recovery, taking out the emotional as well as physical basis for complaint. May I be a comfort to those I love.

Amen.

You Create Your Own Reality

“If you observe health rather than disease, abundance rather than poverty, peace rather than conflict, happiness rather than sadness–disease, poverty, conflict and sadness will be no more real to your brothers and sisters than it is to you. (Treatises of A Course of Love: Treatise on the Personal Self, 18.6)”

Affirmation: “I choose health, abundance, peace, and happiness today.”

Reflections:

1 – Reality

In my reading of this passage for today, I see two aspects that are important. The first is that we create our own reality. The second is that what we create affects others as well.

2 – Jane Roberts’s Seth

Creating our own reality is a fundamental tenet of Jane Roberts’s Seth, written in the seventies. Of course, we are listening to Jesus, and I cite Seth to show the emergence of this idea in our culture. Can we really have health, abundance, peace, and happiness just by wishing for it? In part, yes. But I think not entirely. It is our larger Self that actually determines the experiences that we meet, and this larger Self may have plans for us that we need rather than want. It is certainly wrong to blame the victim if bad things happen. The personal self isn’t in full control. Blaming the victim is a particularly insidious trap that makes that person feel even worse than he/she does anyway. The larger Self may make decisions that in the short run appear detrimental. The end result is always good, though, even if the end result is now to cease living on this earth—death.

3 – Affecting Reality of Others

The second aspect of this passage is the more startling and less well known assertion that what we anticipate directly affects the experience of our brothers and sisters. Can we really bring them good things if we think right? I think that this passage is saying “yes.” This behooves us to get right with God, to let our interactions with others be positive always, and to know that what we say and do affects on subtle levels and not just the superficial.

4 – Health, Abundance, Peace, Happiness

May we have the good things today. May we have abundant health, abundant wealth (either material and/or spiritual), peace (of God), and genuine happiness (joy). These positive experiences will follow us all the days of our lives if the larger Self (the Christ within) also believes that these things are in our best interests. The law of attraction is at work, but not in the materialistic fashion that it is sometimes depicted.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I would create a good reality today, for myself and, to the degree that I can, for others. I realize that I can use the law of attraction to make the materialistic attracted to myself, but this will be ashes and dust unless my heart is in the right place, unless I seek also for the intangibles of God. May I do so today.

May what I do affect my brothers and sisters is a right way, a good way. May I think, say, or do nothing that will hinder their progress toward You and Home. May we work together today to have the good, but to be equally certain that the good is shared.

Amen.