Good morning. How shall we get started?
Good morning. It is a good, good morning, offering you opportunity after opportunity to recognize who you are, who everybody else is and recognize what everything in your environment is.
What are they again?
They are Source-Creation in expression. It is like waves breaking on a rock. You will see the individual droplets in the spray, but you know it is all the ocean expressing in waves and waves expressing in sprays and sprays expressing in droplets, expressing in molecules, atoms, particles, etc. The ocean containing all particles, each particle containing the ocean. How? Because the particle in the droplet in the spray caused by the wave crashing on the rock shares its true identity with the ocean. And truth is all there is. The way it shows up to your senses is an effect; and effects aren’t cause for anything.
Okay. I need to remember: Abstract – cause – one – and the choice I have is: to be willing to unite on the spirit level with everyone and everything and drop any other thought.
Yes, simply stated you have two options, one choice: to be willing to unite in spirit with everyone and everything that comes to mind or shows up in your face, or not be willing to do that. Each option has its own effects. The first leads to alignment internally with the creative quality of Source-Creation and the immediate experience of that. The second leads to identification with and attachment to the world of form (body, circumstances, environment, organizations, etc.) and its inevitable loop patterns. Whatever you are faced with at any given time, this is always the choice before you: spirit or rabbit hole, truth or gossip, life or death.
When you put it like that …
There is no other way to put it.
But aren’t “spirit, truth, life” not simply another story I tell myself?
Yes, obviously. It is a story that uses words to convey something. What does it convey? Total freedom, total peace, overflowing joy, and the love and light that makes all of it possible. All these again are just words, but they point to a joyous experience that is real.
Whereas the stories told in rabbit holes lead to experiences that are not real?
Well, real enough for the one experiencing it. Sort of like the monkey who reaches into a bottle to grab a nut because he is hungry, but now finds himself starving because he won’t unclutch his fist and can’t withdraw his hand through the narrow bottleneck. How real is his starvation? Rabbit hole stories close in on themselves and offer the experience of the concrete effect of ever tightening constraint and limitation, while the experience of the abstract truth of total freedom and peace is happening all around.
It shouldn’t get any sillier … We do have it upside down and backwards, don’t we?
You do. And it only takes choosing the other option to get it right side up and facing towards freedom and peace.
The option of seeing spirit in everyone and everything?
Yes, and exclusively so. Not just a little bit over here and a little bit over there. Sure, you need to take steps, for you can’t force yourself to abandon your ingrained habits all of a sudden without the feeling of panic striking at your heart. But the goal is to choose spirit – love, light, joy, peace, beauty and so on. Choose it inwardly, as in aligning with them and asking inner guidance to look at thoughts and feelings in you that do not speak of these qualities in order to swap them for love and light, and choose it outwardly, by only acknowledging spirit, to the exclusion of everything else that is clamoring for your allegiance.
And when I can’t seem to sustain the choice? In other words, when I get drawn back into looped thinking patterns of blame, resentment, all kinds of shoulds?
Go to the place inside where you feel your willingness to be willing to be shown. And be still. You need do nothing. In your defenselessness your safetly lies, the Course teaches. Why? Because defenses always signal identification with form, with effect. By defending, even if by the world’s standards you are 100% right, you show yourself that you believe effects are cause. And you will have stepped into a rabbit hole. By not defending (listing arguments, proving you’re right, etc.), you take a step towards the choice for spirit, towards the light.
Even though I still feel like I want to offer arguments to balance the situation?
Yes, even then. Why? Because then you show that you recognize that offering a defense is engaging with the situation on the level of effect – it is like reaching into the mirror to straighten your messy morning hair. Now your arm and hand are engaged and they are not available to follow inner guidance. See?
Okay, whereas if I count to ten, even if I’m on the verge of offering a defensive argument, I keep my arm and hand available.I: Yes, not reaching into the mirror illustrates that you are willing for your arm and hand to be used by spirit.
So that is the stop and the drop, as in: stop, drop, ask and trust? And now I ask again and wait some more?
Exactly! You’ve got this. Now, practice it.
Thank you.
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