Why Do I See My Self As Separate?
August 9, 2009
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Today, the thought that is coming to me is about being One with Spirit.
I think that I tend to see Spirit as one thing and myself as another. As I read and reread the essays of Thomas Troward I am getting the message that this is not clear thinking.
Each person needs to realize that his or her ‘individuality’ is not something ’separate’ from Spirit.
It’s more about clarifying one’s awareness. Spirit and my spirit are One, like a drop of water is one with the ocean.
Or, the way I’m thinking about it is through the image of a spring of water.
It’s all the same water. The spring is an ‘opening’ in the earth. My ‘individuality’ is an opening in the earth.
The water is One. The spring does not see itself as separate from other springs. It is the same water appearing in separate locations.
I don’t know why it is that I have a consciousness. Water simply is. It bubbles up from the great underground stream from which it comes. I’m not sure ‘it’ has consciousness.
But, I am conscious and I can create a separation through that consciousness.
But what is coming to me today is that this is a wrong way of thinking.
I need to clarify my awareness. My consciousness is one with the Christ Consciousness. I simply need to let my self become aware that this is so.
Confusion and muddiness only hide the truth that it is all only still the same water, the same consciousness.
I have the power to focus of the swirling sediment in the water or to remember that I am water anyway.
So, I think that today I am letting my mind settle. I am choosing to remember that I am water. I am Consciousness. And I can ‘rest’ in that truth and let my self bubble up and flow.
I release the tendency to want to see my self as separate. I am one with Christ Consciousness. I wonder how that feels? I choose to let this truth restore itself to my awareness today. I am bubbly, clear, limpid alive and life giving.
I am liveliness, just as the clear limpid water of a spring is lively and enlivening. Now that feels like great food for my soul. I’m reminded: “taste and see that the Lord is Good.”
This message is brought to you by one who is tasting Goodness in this moment. I am liveliness bubbling along.
Blessings and peace.
Norm
The Caterpillar and The Ego
August 3, 2009
Yesterday afternoon I watched a butterfly being born.
The cocoon, which had been getting clearer over the 19 day gestation period split open and in no time a beautiful 
fresh, soft, limp new Monarch butterfly hung upside down under the hollyhock lead it was born. I hung there, upside down for about an hour. It would release a brown liquid several times over that period. It moved its tentacles around and made mine steps away from the old shell of the cocoon.
After an hour it moved its wings for the first time, opening the beautiful orange colored span wide for a few seconds. It rested a bit and did it again. then it gradually move around the leaf, upside down. After twenty minutes of that it reached the ‘edge’ of the life and went right around once. It paused and made a move and gradually from being upside down it was now right side up on the leaf.
It rested again. After a few more minutes it walked all over the top of the leaf exploring the contours of it. It would open its brightly colored wings several times and then all of a sudden it let go and flew it’s first flight to about 15 feet away. It landed on the ground near a car tire and it grabbed on the rubber tire and crawled up the side. It rested again and after a time it flew again. This time making its way to the side of a large maple tree trunk about 30 feet further away.
There it rested again preparing for its next flight. What an amazing process to witness.
This wonderful drama of watching the birth of a butterfly reminded me of our own journey as human beings.
We are born and we crawl around for a while. I suppose our crawling stage can be much longer than that first year of childhood. In a way we crawl around learning about the world in which we were born and how to get around in it.
We collect information and create, as it were, the caterpillar view of life.
That stage of life can be satisfying but there comes a time when we want more. We might ask questions like; what is life all about? What is the meaning of life on earth and pain and sorrow mingled with joy and aspiration?
The dis-ease can grow to be intense and the caterpillar phase comes to an end as the ‘ego’ gets woven into a kind of cocoon.
Like the caterpillar it must let go all of its learning, its beliefs and structures. The caterpillar turns into a gelatin like substance. I suppose that’s like the ego loosing it’s structure. It has to let go of what it thought it was to become what it is intended to be.
In the cocoon it looses the memory and the form of its old self. It lets go of its old structures. It surrenders, as it were to a higher power.
Gradually it is transformed. It becomes a whole new creature. From a hairy flat colored crawling thing it turn into this magnificent brightly colored luminescent flying creature. It has now beauty it did not have and a new power to fly around instead of crawl. It is at a new level of consciousness. It is empowered to experience life at a whole new level.
So it is with the ego or our old self… the self that came into being in a certain context with certain experiences and with only limited ability to process. That poor ‘ignorant’ ego had to learn to make all sorts of decisions without ‘knowledge’ as it were. It created its own world in which to survive.
One day that is not enough and it needs to learn to connect with it Source. In so doing it is given the permission now to move toward the cocoon stage. This could be called “the renewing of the mind” process.
In this phase Spirit instructs the ego. After some time ego comes to a halt – it is trapped in the cocoon. And love instructs it to let go off all its old ideas and beliefs and to trust that it is being empowered to be a whole new creature.
As Thomas Troward says: Principle is not bound by “precedent”.
The ego in its surrender of the old ideas of itself, is freed up now to connect with Principle, free from all those preceding ideas of itself. It can now experience itself at a whole new level of existence. It can now see and understand itself as totally loved, guided and governed. It can understand that it now has the power and the resources to make intelligent decisions according to this new level and that this will continue infinitely. It can now rest from all the stress of the old and expand its wings with joy into the forever spiral of delightful learning and unshakable confidence consciously aware that it is guided by love and wisdom at that it has a share in this great reality.
It knows itself as not separate but it as ‘One with Source’. It is now free to create liff from Principle cleared of precedents. It is free like the new butterfly to spread its wings and create a whole new way of being and of serving. It is free to create from it new awareness and consciousness a life in keeping with it essence.
It’s no longer a bitter caterpillar life but a bright and free flowing butterfly life.
Joy now presides as the new creation, the essential new self co-creates with Spirit a new life from a whole new perspective.
The soul set free sounds through its real beautiful colors.
Peace and Blessings
Norm.
Cause & Effect — So What?
July 31, 2009
Today I am looking at Cause and Effect.
If I throw a rock at a window it will have the ‘effect’ of breaking that window. My action will ’cause’ a broken window.
The CAUSE OF ALL CREATION AND ALL THAT IS IN IT, IS GOD.
On the other hand I am the cause of the result of my life as it is now. Am I ready to own that?
Here is a great prayer by Raymond Charles Barker from his book The Power of Decision:
“My mind is forever a part of the infinite Mind. The Infinite Mind is never disturbed. It knows no negatives. It has no fears, resentments or frustrations. Therefore in my mind now these cannot exist and do not exist. They have no cause, continuity or conclusion.”
Notice the ‘principles’ he is using. He is not looking at himself and his life situation and habits. No. Instead he focuses on the ’source’ of all things. Instead of identifying with his pain and weakness, he chooses to identify with Source.
In the last sentence he reveals the second principle that since humans are made in the image of God it is OK to assume we have the power to cause.
Then he continues:
“The creativity of the Infinite Mind is the creativity of my mind. The clarity of the Infinite Mind is the clarity of my mind. God is in business by means of me and the business of God is always Good. Therefore, I think with ease of my accomplished goal. It is being created in my mind right now. I welcome its appearance in my experience.”
Here also we see the continued association with God and we see another principle. That is the one of ‘denying’.
His logic goes like this: If I am the cause, I am the cause of my life now, as it is.
If I want to see change, I need to change my ’source’ thinking.
So I refuse to feed thoughts of defeatism and pain and sorrow.
I say no to that, in this moment.
In so doing I make a New Reality happen in my life, exactly as I hold the thought of my identification with God and refuse to feed the way of thinking that got me where I am. I have to choose the New Way of Thinking in this moment and as I maintain my perspective and perception of who I am in God,
I ESTABLISH THE ‘GROUND’ OF MY REALITY NOW.
I shift my life out of the way that lead me here, to the way I truly am in God.
I hold my truth at the causal level and the ‘effect’ is I am that which Iam perceiving my self to be.
I am clarifying that I am happy, healthy, rich and creative.
Refusing to feed, negativity and the wrong tendencies that I initiated and established in my ignorance, I am now making the corrective at cause level and a New Direction and Way of being is founded.
Somehow, all of this is making sense to me more and more these days.
I am finding my way out of who I ‘thought’ I was and felt ‘conditioned’ to be.
I am selecting my truth and choosing to be who I am, over against the choices I made earlier in my life.
Does this make sense to you? It sure does increasingly to me.
Peace
Norm
What ‘Thought’ Really Is! — Really?
July 28, 2009
I am keeping on thinking about thinking and what ‘thought’ is.
I think most of us think that thought is that bunch of unregulated ideas we stream in our mind.
But, think about it for a moment. Thought is really the power, or faculty or human attribute that makes us able to pick from that stream.
Here is a beautiful definition of thought, that I found, by Charles Fillmore : Thought is the process in mind by which substance is acted on by enegy, directed by intelligence.
From that we understand that, first of all, thought is a process. It is the minds ability to process thoughts that stream in our mind. Thought is the ability to give direction to thoughts. Thought is a faculty of the mind that is rooted in intelligence.
Intelligence is the ability to perceive, know and handle thoughts or ideas.
The next question is; what is mind?
Again, Fillmore writes: “…by mind we mean God — the Universal Principle of causation, which includes all principles…
There is nothing but Mind and Thought — Principle and its mode of expression.”
In very simple terms all he is saying is that mind which is like the intelligent artist, uses the process of thought to create the masterpiece he or she invisions. The Principle is the Cause and the mode of expression is the process called thought.
The point of all of this is simply to help us “notice” who we are as humans made in the image of God.
- We are intelligence
- We are Mind
- We are able to use intelligence
- We are One with Universal Mind with Principle
- We therefore can use thought
- We express through thought
- We are capable of self reflection
- We are able to direct thought
- We are able (like God) to create
How important is it for us to realize how thought creates.
As the old Scripture says: out of the abundance of the heart (mind) the mouth speaks…( expressses, creates).
The question to ask ourselves is; do I realize what is in my heart/mind? Do I realize my creative genius?
Do I realize that every thought, good or bad lauches a tendency to express itself, to create itself in my world?
If I do I need to pay attention to what I’m thinking about because it has massive repercussions on the outcome of my life.
There is no judgment in this. It jus is the way it is.
We are not to be afraid of this but simply face the fact and come, by the help of Spirit to be in charge of our mind or or intelligence and learn to use the process of thought to co-create our reality.
With all of that said if you are interested in following more lines of thought on thought and the wonderful aspects or attibutes it has, just put your personal email in the box to the right of this post and get the 12 part series that I created, mostly to help my self get a deeper grasp of the amazing truth that I have the power to direct my thought by learning to be aware of and to use the faculties that the mind uses to process thinking.
Well, I tried to make this simple but it seems complex when I review it. I guess I’ll just have to keep on working at simplification. If you followed me this far. Awesome.
I’m not sure how many dare to think this way but if this topic is of interest to you, just let me know.
Peace and blessings
Norm
Do You Really ‘Think’ or Do You Merely ‘Think You Think’?
July 27, 2009
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Well I keep reflecting on the thought of Thomas Troward. I just find it so alluring.
Here are some of his words that draw my attention recently: “To give right direction to the thoughts of ignorant thinkers is the purpose of much religious teaching, which these uninstructed ones must accept by faith in bare authority because they are unable to realise its true import”.
Troward’s assumption as he wrote those words was that there is a lot of disordered thinking going on in the world.
People are confused in their thinking, wouldn’t you say?
So the purpose of the great religious thinkers was to help people rectify their thinking. People felt lost and confused. They felt alone and afraid. They could not make sense of life on this earth.
The religious thinkers understood that there is ‘order’ and that this was so because they knew something of God and perceived that this Higher Intelligence was very ordered in Its thinking. This was evident in how the whole Universe hangs together without planets crashing into each other at every turn and so on.
There is also the beautiful ordered symmetry of a flower. Surely this is not the result of random and chaotic thinking.
These religious thinkers called people out of the nonesense of their fearful, irratioanl and superstitious thinking.
But people often were not nurtured into their own ability to think. They were simply told to follow the laws of the church or by faith to accept the teachings of the teachers and not try to figure things out for themselves.
This may not have been because the teachers did not want to teach this but becaue people were so caught in their fears and dis-ordered thinking that they were not believing they could think it out for themselves.
But good teachers always led their people to realise their connection with the Source of Life… The Spirt Itself. Once connected to Spirit the student was ready to enter upon the journey of individual thinking and personal discovery.
But that journey is not that easy. There are a lot of fears to be walked through on the way out of fearful and chaotic thinking. Human thought is very ‘unregulated’ would you not agree?
People think they think, but in fact they are merely following the trends and suggestions hammered into them by peers and the media. They do their thinking based on the nonesense all around them. They do their thinking ‘based’ on outside facts. They have to discover how to ‘think from the ‘inside’. We might say the ’social proof’ is the basis of their thinking and not the Source of all thought.
So once a person discovers the connection with Spirit within they are called to move out of the phenomenon of unregulated thought.
Being connected with Spirit within they are numbered now with the so called ‘instructed’ teachers and they start the courageous journey out of unregulated or chaotic thinking.
Their purpose becomes, writes Troward: “…hence the great object to which the instructed mind directs its power is to free itself from the entaglement of disordered thought, and to help others do the same. To escape this entaglement is to attain perfect Liberty which is perfect Power.”
The perfect Liberty Troward speaks of is the same as that spoken of in the words of St. Paul : “for freedom you have been set free.” Hence the purpose for each one of us if to be “free” that means to have the courage to learn to think for ourselves from within realizing we are One with Spirit and that we each have a safe Guide to follow and be instructed by, if only we learn to trust that.
Of course this means we have all manner of Power within, if we dare trust that and begin to live our lives accordingly. You and me
are meant to learn to think from within and to break away from that field (of thinking we are thinking) that we could call ’social conscience’ or thinking from outside of ourselves, based on what the current trends are and what others, or some perceived authority is saying. No… I am Free. I have the Author of Life Guiding me. I am Powerful because I can think from within my Self.
Obviously this would take many more words to clarify and the purpose of this blog is not to write a book. So I’ll leave it at that for now.
Blessings and Peace
Norm
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