Easter and Me – and You, Too

I hope each of you had a wonderful Easter, which was celebrated while I was away.

A Course In Miracles (ACIM)’s Lesson 106 in the Workbook for Students is titled: Let me be still and listen to the truth.

I believe this is the quiet whisper you’ve heard me write about if you’ve gotten my messages before. (If this is your first message, go to my website www.DonODell.com and subscribe. There are no advertisements and it is easy to unsubscribe.) Hearing these whispers is what it means to me to truly understand that I am an already-loved eternal spirit having a human experience rather than being a human body that has housed, somewhere, an eternal soul.

I believe this passage is related to the resurrection. In the vernacular the resurrection is about the rising of Jesus’ body, which proved to believers He was divine. In ACIM, however, Jesus says it is about the rising of the mind from the ego’s dream of frailty, pain, fear and death to the awareness of eternal life or from the insanity of the ego to a perfectly healed perception. In this healed state I will perceive everything as acts of love or calls for love. Jesus’ resurrection was the proof, not of his divinity, but of the indestructibility of true, spirit-filled Life. His bodily reappearance was a symbol of the fact that true resurrection is of the mind and, thus, it is about the disappearance of the body as a real thing – rather than a magical reappearance.

When I touch base in quietness with my true Self – that innermost part of me – I am in the presence of my already-loved spirit: the real me. From that place I understand there is that place in you, as well. In that place we are One. The separateness we think is so real has vanished into thin air! The peace and serenity I feel is palpable and quite overwhelming. In that instant, there is no time, nor space. That is the reality of the Love of God. That is who I really am. However, I sense it only briefly. It is not a once-and-done exercise. I have also had similar experiences in AA, feeling absolutely connected, on a spiritual level, to all in the room.

Wherever I experience it, it is wonderful!

Lesson 106 states: “1 If you will lay aside the ego's voice, however loudly it may seem to call; if you will not accept its petty gifts that give you nothing that you really want; if you will listen with an open mind, that has not told you what salvation is; then you will hear the mighty Voice of truth, quiet in power, strong in stillness, and completely certain in Its messages.

2 Listen, and hear your Father speak to you through His appointed Voice, which silences the thunder of the meaningless, and shows the way to peace to those who cannot see. Be still today and listen to the truth. Be not deceived by voices of the dead, which tell you they have found the source of life and offer it to you for your belief. Attend them not, but listen to the truth.

3 Be not afraid to circumvent the voices of the world. Walk lightly past their meaningless persuasion. Hear them not. Be still today and listen to the truth. Go past all things which do not speak of Him Who holds your happiness within His Hand, held out to you in welcome and in love. Hear only Him today, and do not wait to reach Him longer. Hear one Voice today.

4 … His miracles are true. They will not fade when dreaming ends. They end the dream instead; and last forever, for they come from God to His dear Son, whose other name is you….

From my book, How the Bible became the Bible, p. 82-3: The Prophet Elijah [circa 9th century b.c.e.]. “Known as Elijah, the Tishbite from the northern kingdom…. He lived during the time when Ahab, King of the northern kingdom (Israel) married Jezebel, a Phoenician and worshipper of Baal….

“Elijah was known throughout his life as a champion of the “little people.” In the narrative of Naboth’s vineyard (1 Kings 21) we can visualize Elijah standing strongly against Ahab and all the subtle (and not so subtle) messages of the king’s wife, Jezebel—shrewd and calculating as the emissary of the Phoenician god Baal. When Ahab comes to take the vineyard, Elijah confronts him with the terrible word of doom from Yahweh. Elijah is supporting this common peasant against a king. His passion for fearless support of the “little man” is deeply rooted in the religion of Yahweh—very similar to Nathan’s condemnation of King David over his theft of Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba (2 Sam. 11–12).

“Secondly, of course, is Elijah’s challenge to the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. Elijah, with Yahweh on his side, challenged Phoenician priests, with their god Baal on their side, to a “duel of the gods.” For Elijah this was a “fall on your sword” issue….

“However, an interesting and touching note: Following this highly dramatic pyrotechnic confrontation, Jezebel, the queen, threatened Elijah. He feared for his life and hid in the mountains looking for the Lord to protect him. He looked in an earthquake, in mighty winds, in fire. He finally heard the “… still, small voice …” of the Lord (1 Kings 19: 9–14).” This, of course, is also reminiscent of Psalm 46:10 – “Be still and know that I am God.”

All I need to de is be truly willing to see things differently and ask the Holy Spirit (the voice for God in ACIM) to help me develop a different perception, I just need to be willing and to be still and listen, not to the loud voices of my ego, but to the quiet whispers of the Lord. Just like Elijah. Just like the Psalmist.

As I’ve stated before, “I have to understand, on a visceral level, who the “Me” or “I” really is when I am speaking or thinking. The “I” that says to myself, “I really need a newer, more reliable car” is a different “I” than the one that says to Spirit, “I can’t do this anymore; help me perceive things the way You see them.”

Although these messages are mostly for me, thanks for listening to me and getting to know me – warts and all. As always, feel free to forward this message to your friends, family, and those accompanying you on your spiritual journey.

Don

#2 Apr 2017

Copyright 2017

The Serenity Prayer, My Ego, and Me

Early in my sobriety I was confused about the part of the Serenity Prayer that asked for “…Wisdom to know the difference [between the things I could change and those I could not].” The first stanza of this prayer is recited at every meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous I have ever attended. It is an excerpt from a prayer by Reinhold Niebuhr, an American theologian. It goes like this: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

I simply didn’t know the difference between the things I could and couldn’t change and I was too embarrassed to ask and reveal my ignorance. I finally did ask, however. And am I glad I did.

I was told that I couldn’t change other people, places, or things. “What, then, does that leave you to focus on, Donnie?” I smiled and didn’t say anything, but I had nodded – in that knowing kind of way you nod, even though you still aren’t sure of the answer. My friend saw through that and continued to ask me, “I’m serious Don.  If you can’t change people, places or things, what does that leave you to focus on?”

“Myself.” I answered.

“Correct. Just remember: ‘If you’re not the problem, then there is no answer.’”

For those of you unfamiliar, I would like to continue with Niebuhr’s complete, but simple, prayer:

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time; accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; trusting that You will make all things right if I surrender to Your will, so that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with You forever in the next.”  Amen

I am always my problem. It’s not that I believe I am that important. It’s just that dealing with myself is all I can handle. That is summed up in another of AA’s great little sayings: “Keep the focus on yourself – just for today. The rest of your life is none of your business.”

This is very, very similar to what I learn in A Course in Miracles (ACIM). Why then, oh why, do I find it so easy to understand what it is that you need to do to fix yourself? What you should correct about yourself? How you could improve, if only you would ….??

I think Tommy was absolutely correct when he was still alive. He died after about a year of sobriety. He died of cancer. He died sober. He would always introduce himself in meetings by saying: “Hi everyone. My name is Tommy. I’m addicted to alcohol and to anything and anyone that will enable me to keep my focus off of me.” Invariably, no matter how often we had heard him, we would all laugh. It was so funny, but it was also so true of all of us. And we knew it. But whenever it was said out loud in that straightforward kind of way, it sounded so ridiculous and so it was just plain funny.

Among other things, thinking about and composing these messages is one of the ways I keep my focus on me.

As I’ve stated before, “I have to understand, on a visceral level, who the “Me” or “I” really is when I am speaking or thinking. The “I” that says to myself, “I really need a newer, more reliable car” is a different “I” than the one that says to my Holy Spirit, “I can’t do this anymore; help me perceive things the way You see them.”

Although these messages are mostly for me, thanks for listening to me and getting to know me – warts and all. As always, feel free to forward this message to your friends, family, and those accompanying you on your spiritual journey.

Don

#1 Aug 2016

Copyright 2016

Feelings Are Not Facts – Unless You Want Them To Be

This thought, feelings are not facts, is nothing new. I have, however, come face to face with that over frustrations from having our house on the market. I get frustrated and so does my spouse. “Natural enough,” you say. Certainly, but feelings, as opposed to emotions, are just feelings – unless I want to really pay attention to them.

When I was an elementary school student – maybe 4^th or 5^th grade – my older brother and I went to see “The Thing from Another World,” with James Arness (Matt Dillon of ‘Gun Smoke’ fame) in his first role as the “Tbing.” It was scary to us. You have to remember this was in the early 1950s. As we walked home that evening, it was dark and the streets of Artesia, NM were dark and deserted. We tried to ignore our frightened feelings. We walked slowly. Tried to whistle while we walked. Slowly, however, we moved off the sidewalk and out into the empty streets. Then our pace began to pick up a little – just a little, then a little more. Finally, a cat (or something) rattled a trash can, and – boy howdy -  we were off like rockets. We raced all the way home.

Our anxiety over monsters and invisible boogey men had finally been responded to with our running bodies and suddenly the feelings we had had become facts. The faster we ran, the scareder we became.

I think each of you can identify with that phenomenon.

There are helpful emotions we all harbor. These can all be boiled down to emotions tied to Love or to Fear. Each emotion, however, is like a diamond having many light-catching facets. Love consists of the major sub-emotions of Acceptance, Joy, Peace, Compassion, Courageousness, Serenity, etc. Fear consists of Apathy, Guilt, Anger, Hate, Lust, Envy, Pride, etc. But each of these sub-emotions consists of a variety of fleeting feelings.

For example, the sub-emotion Acceptance consists of appreciation, balance, consideration, delight, elation, friendly, gentle, gracious, mellow, open, playful, tender and understanding. The sub-emotion Anger consists of being argumentative, defiant, frustrated, harsh, hostile, impatient, mad, mean, petulant, rude, spiteful, stern, vengeful, and willful.

These feelings are not factual – unless I want them to be. When I begin to voice these feelings to others and they begin to join in the conversation with me, slowly these fleeting feelings become facts.

I cannot (nor do I want to) control my major emotions. Nor can I control having fleeting feelings. I can, however, control the transition from feelings-as-non-facts to feelings-as-facts. I can do that by acknowledging to myself that I am feeling thus and thus and reassuring myself that these are instant, fleeting egoic feelings. I do not suppress them, nor do I give voice to them. When I give these feelings voice, I give them a certain kind of reality. Slowly I begin down a very slippery emotional slope – just like my brother and I did when we began picking up our pace until we were running headlong out of sheer terror.

When I control this transition from feelings-as-non-facts to feelings-as-facts, I am reminding myself that I am not a body nor am I what I think. I am an already-loved eternal spirit (my True Self) simply having a human experience. I am cared for. I am loved. I am whole. I am Light. I am at one with all other living creatures. I am at peace.

As I’ve stated before, “I have to understand, on a visceral level, who the “Me” or “I” really is when I am speaking or thinking. The “I” that says to myself, “I really need a newer, more reliable car” is a different “I” than the one that says to my Holy Spirit, “I can’t do this anymore; help me perceive things the way You see them.”

Although these messages are mostly for me, thanks for listening to me and getting to know me – warts and all. As always, feel free to forward this message to your friends, family, and those accompanying you on your spiritual journey.

Don

#4 Jul 2016

Copyright 2016

Form, Content and the Holy Spirit

Recently we had a whopper of a rainstorm – over 4 inches in about six hours, which is a lot for our mountainous clay soil. In no time at all, our creek, fed by the forest behind us, was swollen and raging from the above- and below-ground runoff. The next morning, still rampaging, I went out to do some superficial clean-up in case we got a call to show the house. I found ten-pound pieces of debris from the Catoosa Wildlife Management Area which our property abuts. I found basketball-sized river rock that was now 10 feet away from where they used to be. I also found exposed creek critters.

I was, again, reminded of just how much life there is in a creek. There are microscopic, few-celled, and larger (but still very small) organisms there. There are also tadpoles, frogs, crayfish and ducks that make this their home. There is organic muck that feeds small-celled plant life and algae. The few-celled live off the microscopic plant life and single celled organisms. Larger insects live off the few-celled. Tadpoles live of the larvae of the larger insects. Frogs live off the insects and some of the tadpoles. Ducks and crows eat the smaller frogs. It’s a natural cycle.

Life (with a capital “L”) was revered by all indigenous cultures. All Life, including human, was respected. There was no hierarchy of valued Life. Life was Life. Most called Life some form of “Spirit.” Regardless, Life was eternal, revered, and respected. These “primitive” people understood the natural cycle of Life and lived within that cycle. They understood that Life was eternal, simply changing its form as it migrated from death to rebirth to death again: Insects to tadpoles to frogs to poop and carcass to plants and algae to insects.…..

Life itself hadn’t gone anywhere. Only its form had changed. I recognized that Truth all over again as I was in the creek. A Course in Miracles (ACIM) considers this to be a significant learning exercise for each of us – namely, to begin understanding the difference between form and content.

As Robert Perry describes in the Glossary of Terms from A Course in Miracles [Circle Publishing, 2005]: Form and Content – “Two aspects possessed by things in this world; the shape (form) something takes – the words, images, or behavior it is clothed in – and the essential meaning (content) which that form is meant to communicate. The ego disregards content, believing that the form is the content, the form is the meaning…. It thinks that problems are matters of form and that the solution lies in changing the form. The Holy Spirit sees the form as neutral, as inherently meaningless and content-free. Because His only concern is the content, He will adapt form to suit the need…. We must realize that what will save us is not a change in form but a change in content – a change in the meaning we see in things.”

To change the meaning I see in things, events, situations, or people, I need the Holy Spirit. It is beyond my capability to forcefully will myself – by myself – to see things with the meaning seen by the Holy Spirit. As I wrote in my book, How the Bible became the Bible [Infinity Publishing, 2007, ISBN 978-007414-2993-3], much of the biblical writings are attempts by people as they tried to describe the power of God or their transformation via Jesus using very inadequate human words. Many now believe the Truth of only the words, themselves, rather than identifying with the transformations that have occurred in their own lives – which is beyond description or explanation. In short, biblical literalists are relying on the written form [words] of scripture rather than the content [their own and the writers’ transformations].

From the Text of ACIM [14.X.7-8]: 7. The only judgment involved is the … division into two categories; one of love, and the other the call for love. [This requires the Holy Spirit because] You cannot safely make this division, for you are much too confused either to recognize love, or to believe that everything else is nothing but a call for love. You are too bound to form, and not to content. What you consider content is not content at all. It is merely form, and nothing else. For you do not respond to what a brother really offers you, but only to [your] particular perception of his offering by which the ego judges it.

8. The ego is incapable of understanding content, and is totally unconcerned with it. To the ego, if the form is acceptable the content must be. Otherwise it will attack the form. If you believe you understand something of the "dynamics" of the ego, let me assure you that you understand nothing of it. For of yourself you could not understand it. The study of the ego is not the study of the mind. In fact, the ego enjoys studying itself, and thoroughly approves the undertakings of students who would "analyze" it, thus approving its importance. Yet they but study form with meaningless content.…

The cycle of Life: Dead insects and plant life to soil to vegetation to deer to me and, eventually, back to soil again. Life doesn’t stop. Its content is eternal. It simply changes its form. I need this constant reminder from nature to help me stay on track. Perhaps, some day, I will be able to discern my reliance on form rather than content without the prodding of natural cycles. Perhaps I will be able to routinely ask the Holy Spirit to help me see things as either an act of Love or a call for Love.

As I stated last week, “I have to understand, on a visceral level, who the “Me” or “I” really is when I am speaking or thinking. The “I” that says to myself, “I really need a newer, more reliable car” is a different “I” than the one that says to my Holy Spirit, “I can’t do this anymore. Help me perceive things the way You see them.”

Although these messages are mostly for me, thanks for listening to me and getting to know me – warts and all. As always, feel free to forward this message to your friends, family, and those accompanying you on your spiritual journey.

Don

#3 May 2016

Copyright 2016