The Reiki Cafe 

Many friends have told me about a Course in Miracles, some telling that personal writings of mine touched on some of the key principles. I found these passages as ones I needed to hear, rehear and take home in my heart. I thought to share it with my healing community (from Student Workbook, Lesson 93):"

~

"You think you are the home of evil, darkness and sin. You think if anyone could see the truth about you he would be repelled, recoiling from you as if from a poisonous snake. You think if what is true about you were revealed to you, you would be struck down with horror so intense that you would rush to death by your own hand, living on after seeing this being impossible ...

"You sinlessness is guaranteed by God. Over and over this must be repeated, until it is accepted. It is true. Your sinlessness is guaranteed by God. Nothing can touch it, or change what God created as eternal. The self you made, evil and full of sin, is meaningless. You sinlessness is guaranteed by God, and light and joy and peace abide in you...

"You are what God created or what you made. One Self is true: the other is not there. Try to experience the unity of your One Self. Try to appreciate Its holiness and the Love from Which It was created. Try not to interfere with the Self Which God created as you, by hiding Its majesty behind the tiny idols of evil and sinfulness you have made to replace It. Let It come into Its own. Here you are; This is You. And light and joy and peace abide in you because this is so."

~

I guess the transformational part of these readings is that they dissemble beliefs I held for decades as *truths*, and exposed them as distortions: maddening perceptions that are not sinful, evil or bad in themselves (as I thought my identity), but patterns of perception badly in need of correction, restoration and clear-seeing.

I found in reading, in dariing to examine these *truths* how painful, disheartening and futile it is has been to identify mySelf with what the CIM calls 'the ego' or 'the tiny self' --; it seems the extent to which I claim this 'littleness' as my identify is the extent to which I am prohibited from manifesting and experiencing 'light and joy and peace' in my lives and the lives of those I encounter. And the course says that light, joy and peace are my true nature.

I am doing the Course exercises. I have had glimpses of the Holy Instant with a friend. I am ready to shed that which does not work; to release it for that which is, always has been and which is me in the most eternal aspect: the part of me no behavior, belief or barrier can destroy. I also am committing to not feed the illusion again, to supplant unworkable beliefs by no longer entertaining them and replacing them with honoring ones constructed by disciplined, repeated actions.

Blessings, light, peace to all.
Please send Reiki as well. I am in the midst of a geographical move to live closer to my children.

Peace,

Beau

Thank you for sharing.

My husband is an actor, and is one of the nicest, gentlest, kindest persons you'll ever meet. Years ago he had to confront his hidden inner demons when he had to play King Richard III, an enormously evil person. I remember this time very well. He was actually afraid of himself, because he was able to delve deep within to find this character in his own being.

I think good and evil may live side by side, and it is our personal choices which influence how we live our lives.

Beau, your journey is hard, and I don't envy you that, but I admire your courage to confront your difficulties. It seems to me you are well positioned to win your battle.
Keep writing, and let us know when your book is ready.

Blessings,
Starlight

Beau, so good to hear from you! Yes, I worked this workbook during the 90's. It was miraculous for me also. Have you also read the Conversations with God Series. They say the same kinds of things. It is good to reread over and over until you saturate yourself.

finality

Today is my 47th birthday ... my children, Rebecca, 16, and Sam, 8, are taking me out for BBQ and chocolate cake.

Thanks for the sharing, sunlight, and encouragement. Thanks for the CWG series support, finality, I have the books and reread them quite a bit ...

I do believe 'saturate' is the key ... the errant messages of unworthiness are from deep and persistent influences: some from home, self and especially religious ritual (at the Catholic Mass, at the point of the holy of holies, we are to bend heads, at every Eucharistic celebration, and claim "Lord, I am not worthy to receive you ...") It is no wonder to me that a lot of the cafe members whose words and sharings I appreciate the most are/or/were at one time Catholic. What a journey from a large 'C' understanding of God and Self to the small 'c'!

So, for me, the gift I give myself this day is the commitment to this saturation of a new perception, a clear- seeing, a refusal to participate in a wounded idea of me I inherited from others caught in an illusion of sickness...

Just for this day, I will take actions to move myself, in each encounter, thought, act and word:

from unworthiness, to worthy
from shame, to gift
from blame, to blessing
from wounded victim, to one who uses all experiences to exercise compassion
from hurt, to gratitude for all life experiences that join to make me the me I am today. (Not some fuzzy *worthy* I in the future, but NOW, in process, incomplete, stumbling sometimes forward, sometimes back, but moving toward a perception of mySelf that is whole, free, strong and true)
from broken, to whole
from asleep in an illusion, to awake in the moment
from soul-sick, to a life fully, gloriously expressed
from pathology, to one given a creative path, a dark contrast against which a newfound inner light may shine
from dead in small 'self,' to life in a great Self
from any limiting categorization (296.6, divorced, disabled) to a being beyond category, lumping or limits

I am in a body; I am not my body: I am free
Oh, these words are fun, great, freeing to write ... but the living, the living ... there will be the true rub!

Blessings to all whose encouragement has assisted me, has shone light on me, to me, through me when I believed the dark real.

Peace, love to all

Beau

Beau, thank you for your generous sharings. May I add one more step in this process? (I am going to anyway) In your list of things, change the words like this.

from unworthy, to worthy

I see that feeling and behaviour of being unworthy. That has been me in the past. I love this part of me, and I release it now. I choose (and insert your glorious vision of your most magnificent self). In other words just saying worthy reminds you of unworthy. So change it to clean words that show how worthiness feels. Your true worth is that you are actually a piece, a fragment of God, The Holy. How can you ever be unworthy? or anyone else for that matter?

Take them only one at a time.The reason for this method is it takes all this out of the realm of the mind and into your beingness where you actively choose. You thus take charge of this issue. You are in charge now not your brain, not your programming, not your former experiences and behaviors. The realness of you is in charge.

finality

I have thought about your post quite a bit the past two days.

I came across these two passages in my readings, about how close dark is to light, how the Baal Shem Tov taught that within the all evil, there lives a shard of light, waiting cultivation, redemption and restoration:

"[Darkness] should not be denied nor forgotten, neither should [it] be worshipped. The Earth is beautiful, and bright, and kindly, but that is not all. The Earth is also terrible, and dark, and cruel. The rabbit shrieks dying in the green meadows. The mountains clench their great hands full of hidden fire. There are sharks in the sea, and there is cruelty in men's eyes."

"The Tombs of Atuan" Ursula LeGuin

~

On moral evaluation ...

"We go down into ourselves with a flashlight ... - not to excise it [evil]as some alien growth, but rather to discover the holy spark within it...

"We lose our temper because we want things to be better right away. We gaze with lustful eyes because we have forgotten how to love the ones we want to love. We hoard material possessions because we imagine they will help us live more fully. We turn a deaf ear, for we fear the pain of listening would kill us. We waste time, because we are not sure how to enter a living relationship. We even tolerate a society that murders, because we are convinced it is the best way to save life.

"At the bottom of such behavior is something that once was holy. And during times of communion and light our personal and collective perversions creep out of the cellar, begging to be healed, freed, and redeemed...

"We receive whatever evils we have intended and done back into ourselves as our own deliberate creations. We *cherish* them as long-banished children finally taken home again. And thereby transform them and ourselves. When we say the vidui, the confession, we don't hit ourselves; he hold ourselves."

"God Was in this Place and I, i Did Not Know"
Rabbi Lawrence Kushner

Blessings and light for your wonderful share, for the gentleness in me it released and a special thanks to your husband

peace, light, love

Beau

Beau, begin seeing all things without judgment. There are two sides to things in order that we can have a choice as to which we desire to have. A thing is. It is not either bad or good. It just is. Makes it easier to choose cleanly.

finality

/*\ Namaste :-}}

- Happy Birthday!!

- many more as well

>:-}}

- any beer battered onion rings to go with the BBQ??

>:-}}...

- take care

Reiki all around,

all blessings,

Firekeeper