Commentary on ACIM Lesson 77
©Rev. David Seacord


I am entitled to miracles.


"and since you are not relying on yourself".... This is the phrase from todays lesson that 'lit up' as my eyes read it. So that is where I start today, while at the same time 'continuing the conversation'.

The laws of God that we are under--- these laws are the Laws of Love, and nothing else. Even though for God 'nothing is impossible', there is no way for God to make a law that is other than true to His Nature. The would be God 'being untrue'. All the 'fear of God' is an invention, and no matter how deeply the root of this error seems to go, it does not 'come from God', but mind.

The way that 'fear of God' was invented was simply 'to rely upon (our separated) ourselves'. The 'Adam and Eve' story in the Bible tells us that 'In the Garden' our original relationship with God was fearless and intimate. We were completely comfortable with our (metaphorical) nakedness and we knew no such thing as shame. Then we relied upon ourselves (which violated the fundamental God-to-Son-of-God agreement because we had to somehow 'not be one with God' in order to do that), and were 'tossed out'. But it wasn't God that really tossed us out. It was our own shame. We could accept ourselves as we were no longer, the loss was too great, the price too high, and we didn't want to be 'responsible'. In our egoic pride's commitment to 'being right', we have been blaming God for our shame ever since. How tragic a drama this creates. We all know it, because we have all lived it.

The instant we 'lose God', we are left completely self-identified as a body, and God is now an idea of something outside us, not the One Unchanging Presence Always Remaining Within Us that we most identity with. We create the ego to replace the lost Presence of God. We create our arrogance, our self-centeredness to cover up that we created the ego. Then we create other unconscious attributes to cover up that we created our arrogance. On and on it goes, our self-deception thickening. We seem to think this will help us in life, yet, in the 'egoic self-reliant' condition, our drop in conscious awareness is beyond 'huge'.... and life is quickly a survival experience which has very little to do with Love. Except as a survival tool, that is. But of course, that's not love, and that entitles us to nothing but suffering.

What entitles us to miracles is remembering ourselves--- that we are 'as God created us'. Remembering we are still that, that we cannot not be that (and still Be). Remembering it is all 'a dream'. It is a matter of correcting spiritual amnesia. As with any healing process, when we revisit the moment (say, therapeutically) that we chose to experience 'wrongly' (with a greater awareness than in the original drama), then we can choose newly, rightly, and if we do (which means letting go of who we think we are) healing is instantaneous. This principality is what all the miracles being done by 'Body Electronics' practitioners (and all other healers too, of course) is based on. The essence of the work of becoming conscious is being willing to Re-member our Being (bring back to wholeness all the parts of ourselves we has disassociated). And then to remember (re-install, reboot), we are that wholeness.

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A clarification about yesterdays comment that 'of itself' the body is not important. This is not to disparage what the body does have to offer. And one thing it offers is amazing and direct information (if one wishes to see).

What kind? Many kinds. Information about our untrue thinking, our non-loving emotions, our past traumas, our resistances, for instance. This is all stored in the body for us to 'identify with' as 'us'. Basically, we store in the body (and become) everything we believe to be 'the truth' (this is what we usually think 'our stories' are...) that the universe knows is Not 'the Truth'. (Body Electronics calls these "negative thought patterns"). And those 'tight guts', 'nervous twitches', habitual pain places.... those are the body's ways of talking, of delivering the message that "Hey, there something not totally true about what you're believing right now". It's saying '"Hey, look deeper...". Neelam teaches "listen when the body talks...it will help you find where the healing is needed".

Anyway, I do not desire to be misunderstood (or misquoted) as saying 'ignore the physical' by my comment about the body yesterday. The body is not important 'of itself' because it is a temporary phenomena (even if it were to last a thousand years...that's still temporary, by God's standards). But so is a sunset, or the song of a bird. In fact, everything physical is. Not so though, for our eternal nature, which is One with our Creator, who is Love.....

The whole point is to use the physical experience to consciously awaken to Love. It is, as the introduction of the Course says, "our natural inheritance".

Namaste,

David

Commentary on ACIM Lesson 76
©2010 Rev. David Seacord

I am under no laws but God's.


Once I spent a night in jail, because I could not make the traffic officer understand this. (I thought that would get your attention :-).... It is a good story, and I learned a lot from the experience too, but no, I'm not going to tell that saga here (right now). But you can know I've had my fun, OK? (When I was much younger and feistier...)

Ram Dass used to say navigating 'the world' was like knowing the zip codes to all the different 'levels' of reality.... and that the journey was 'fraught with paradox', i.e., that what was true on one level wasn't on another. I'd pretty much agree that that's a good description of the mind, AND also, that now I see the mind-made-world as almost all 'nonsense & madness'. What am I doing here?, I will wonder. The answer that arises from my heart is (of course) "to be God's answer" (Bless, Forgive, See Self in Everything/Everyone). That's what you do (ALL you do, I am now discovering) as a holy (whol-e) man.

Want to hear a little personal share? It's been a little shocking to my ego, but I am discovering by writing these Commentaries that I REALLY AM A HOLY MAN. Oh my god! Me? Yes, me, 'after all That!' (meaning 'after all these years of living, this is what I have come to...). Know how I am discovering this? Because suddenly, the writing of these Commentaries is all I care about, really. ( Commentary 'Day one', I sure didn't know this was where it would go...) Yes, I still love my painting, and I still love my music, and I still love my beautiful aged child-like parents and all of that. But trumping over all my life's content is this happiness to be watching my Self become Whole by being used to write with a power that is clearly beyond my ego's most arrogant self-puffery. And arising with the writing is 'the personal training' I am receiving on the inner.... the recognition that I am DONE (or almost done) with a lot of stuff that I might have continued toying with for a long time IF the miracle of starting to write these Commentaries had not happened. Why? Because by writing, I have discovered I am a Voice for God. That is so sobering, so ultimately maturing, so amazingly honoring that "he who I'd thought I was always going to be" has woken up and realized that this was also always who he was too.... enough to let go of the "games we pass time with", and start saying Yes! to the calls to serve. Nowdays, the door named 'Selfless Service over Here' is opening in front of me 'everywhere'. And the 'leave your ego at the door' sign isn't a confront, it's a promise that inside I will find others 'on the path of wholeness' there too. I go in, and I get happier. Fair enough share for now? Thank you.

Back to the lesson. "There is no way to holiness. Holiness is the Way." It's a New Age song from the 80's, and it came up into my mind's memory as I was reading the lesson. The ego wants to make rules (laws) about how to become holy, but there are none. Being Holy is the only way you become Holy. And how you 'be holy' (be whole) has no rules, it just has 'principalities'. Truth operates along these principalities, and by being whole, you see that, you discover that. And you then Align Your Life to them.... But it is Grace (aka, Miracles) that gives the jump-start to each of us. None of us 'earned' it, even though in another way, we all absolutely did. By being Willing. That was us, lighting off the fireworks, shouting 'You whoooo! Over here! I'm Willing....!!!!' God Loves that!!! (Tongue-in-cheek, we're 'off the record' sometimes referred to as 'God's Fools'...)

Back a month or so ago I was given a big learning opportunity. My body became what we call 'sick', with a nasty racking persistent cough, and lots of 'flu' symptoms. At first, I did the normal things, taking large doses of a lot of herbs and tinctures etc. But after a while, my body's message to me was "please stop drugging it", and so I stopped (trusting God would help the body naturally balance and detox, which it did, in time). I just got peaceful about being sick. I focused on remembering 'my bodies knowing of what physical wholeness was', and I told my being that my body would handle this 'in it's own way'. For a few weeks, other than writing the Commentaries, I didn't 'get much done'. I just rested and ate very lightly. And was mostly 'happy'....

If you go back and read the Commentaries that were then written, it is clear that 'being in a sick body' did not stop my being a Voice for God. If anything, it improved it. Maybe because I was (in effect) doing a 'hermitage' or 'retreat', maybe because what needed to be said needed me to 'be sick' in order to say it. (One way of looking at 'being sick' is as a 'resistance' to something, which, when released, alters the way you see....). In any case, I was in God's healing hands and under God's laws, because I consciously chose to stop doing all the stuff that the world says to do. And now I am as I was when I was sick, which is as God sees me: 'whole', and 'well'. But not for 'some reason', and not for 'no reason'. Right now, wellness is simply what is being given. And my curriculum is: Receive as I am given. This is my path to (w)hol'e'ness.

Of itself, the body is not important. And it has been 'way too important'. And that stops our life. Really. On any 'level', self-importance is a trap. As spoken of here, it's a huge trap that is all about the body, and lots of us have been in it, chased it, desired it, and been near willing to 'sell our soul' to be recognized as 'important'. We all just 'want to be seen'.

But you know what is Really Important? The most precious treasure you'll ever find? It's to 'find the Way'. The Way beyond the body, beyond the mind, beyond 'the person' (and obviously, 'to God' [meaning, 'beyond all separation').

How to do? Just really be 'under no laws but God's'. That is 'the surrender' contract. :-)

Namaste,

David

Commentary on ACIM Lesson 75
Rev. David Seacord

The light has come.


Let us begin today where we ended yesterday: "Being likewise full arises from knowing nothing but God". Knowing nothing but God is exactly what today's lesson is about. And it is very clear about what the spiritual principalities that allow this transcendent state to exist within us are.

First, Forgiveness. We don't say to the stove "Give me heat and then I will give you wood" do we? So why would we say to God "Give me Love and then I will forgive". Even though God is actually doing exactly that all the time, if we are not 'made an empty vessel' by way of forgiveness, little or none of God's love will reach us. Simply put, we are isolated (and therefore insane) to the degree we do not forgive.

What must we forgive? Clearly ourselves, first and foremost, and then everybody and everything else too. It has often been said that no one can love another more than he loves himself, and this is completely true. The practice of self love is the fundamental turnaround. Before it arrived in our life, we were digging ourselves deeper and deeper into the do-do. We were acquiring more and more karma that someday would come back into our lives to be reckoned with. Then somehow we 'got' our real work was to learn to love ourselves. What a blessed day that was. We stopped digging AWAY FROM GOD. We turned around and somehow found the courage to start walking back TOWARDS GOD.

Along the way, many way-showers appeared, and held their light up for us to see by, as we passed. None of that was ever ever ever an accident, although we may not have understood that at the time. The Course is clear about this. We are assigned to each other specifically. Nobody is in our lives 'as a random wild card'. It's all part of the plan.... not a pre-planned plan, like 'predestined theology'.... more like a hologram, where, when we make a new, more conscious choice, a whole new future of new possibilities is instantly created. Like that.

The second principality is Gratitude (Being Thankful). This is the act of acknowledging that we are not doing this journey alone, that we are much more than ourselves, that we are One Being. And our 'little willingness' to be thankful is met with legions of assisting hearts, they also being both learners and teachers of God. This is our community, our common unity, and our inner communion practice ground. If we see the others in our lives as bodies only, we will again find our wellspring of Joy diminishing. Therefore, let us NOT be tempted, and be willing to embrace in Love whom God has sent to our door. They bring gifts we need. Let us be humble, and grateful.

The third principality is Onemindedness. Rightmindedness is onemindedness. Is it not clear that if we believe the ego, that we will never be 'oneminded' about anything? The ego lives in a time/space-based comparative world, with danger of loss and disaster around every corner, and therefore a perpetual need to be fearful. Onemindedness is just the opposite. It is the true faith walk. I love the way it is said in Zen: 'For the non-dual is One with the trusting mind. Here, life in true faith is possible.'

And the fourth principality is Joy. Joy and Light are the same thing. When Light has come, there is Joy. When Joy is present, there is Light everywhere. What creates Joy is being Forgiven, being Thankful, and being of a Unified Mind. It is not so hard. It is actually our very nature. All that is necessary is to remember, while 'in the dream', that this 'dream of reality' is not THE Reality. Doing that regularly is like being the guy that sets off the fireworks shows on the Fourth of July (the US Independence Day holiday). It really gets God's attention. You gotta get, God is just as interested in finding us, as we are in finding Him.

He's the One leaving the lights on everywhere. :-)

Namaste,

David

Commentary on ACIM Lesson 74
©2010 Rev. David Seacord


There is no will but God's.


This is worth every step of our journeys so far, no matter what that has looked like. How fortunate is (s)he who carries not the burden of a personal belligerent will.....

To discover our Oneness with each other and our Oneness with God is predicated upon each of us surrendering our imagined separate selfness, and voluntarily returning our being back to Stillness--- to our original Union with the Divine infinite Beloved. This means, as was metaphorically expressed a few days ago, "taking our hands off the steering wheel of our life, and letting God drive". There may be a ding or two acquired in the transition... not because God is not an excellent driver, but because we have not learned to ABSOLUTELY let Him drive ALL the time yet. But this usually gets worked out pretty quick, and then life begins to cruise in 'divine drive time mode'.

We normally approach this irrevocable 'true surrender' incrementally. God is no fool either, and does not casually drop his cherished 'toads-destined-to-be-saviors' (us) into already boiling water. (Everybody follow that?) He knows that would be counterproductive to the goal we both share, which is TO BE ONE LOVE.

What we need to get to really get God is that It/He/She (your choice) is MUCH smarter than our ego is ever going to be. As egos, we are just no match. All egoic claims to the contrary, no matter how exalted we become in the worldly sense, it will all one day be dust. And all we will be left with is.... well, as the Beatles sang it: "And in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love you make". (Hope you're 'hearing it in your head'. ) :-)

There is no will but God's. Whatever happens, happens therefore AS the will of God. Not that anything has to, or should happen or not happen....I say this in the sense that What IS is only possible 'if allowed' by God, because God is the space that everything that IS is existing in. And God will allow whatever will, in the end, aid us in using the free will He gave us to remember our Self as Him. 'The Devil' does not know this (i.e., that he works for God too), the ego cannot conceive it either, but You, You Son of God, You, a Savior of the Almighty, You certainly Can!!!! And thus, it is our function to not only know this as a certainly, it is also our function to demonstrate it as God's Reality. We do this by ALWAYS being at Peace with What Is BEFORE we act in any way --- because if God has Allowed it, we have discovered a Peace where we can too. This is not passivity. It is something completely different. It is true Surrender. In the world, service is this surrender, in action.....

The Sufis have a most profound wazifa: La illa ha, Il allah hu. It means 'There is no Reality but God'. Sung, chanted, whirled---- it is the ecstasy of the Dervish, of Rumi, Hafiz, Kabir. Once begun, for the whole of life, true Joy would have this ecstasy be never-ending.

Why? Because far far out beyond all our incomprehensibly diminished ideas about God is the Reality of God. Listen to the Buddha speak it.... "MY TRUE HOME IS BRIGHTER THAN TEN THOUSAND SUNS!!! " That's pretty ecstatic.....

Being likewise full arises from knowing nothing but God.


Namaste,

David

Commentary on ACIM Lesson 73
©2010 Rev. David Seacord

I will there be light.


One of the events of my day yesterday was to destroy (by painting over) the painting you are looking at. (Note: This refers to the image included in the original emailed edition of these Commentaries.) Therefore, I am sharing what no longer exists, except as a photographic file in my computer. I'd sat with the choice for a while now (a couple months or so), because in a lot of ways, I loved a lot about it. But in the end, I knew I had to let it go, because to try to 'fix the errors' (that you can't see at such a small size) would only make them worse. Better to release, and move on. So, letting it go was a celebration of creative freedom, knowing 'something else wonderful' would take it's place.

Thousands of years ago in China, the sage Lao Tzu did the same thing.... he'd throw his poems into the river, and just let them go. Some survived (by grace, you might say) so we know about him. But I am sure there have been many great lives lived on this earth that remain unknown to us. Yet they were counted by God, and by those lives they touched. This is therefore possible for us also. And this is enough.

If we live our lives to attain grandeur in the eyes of the world and that is all, we miss the opportunity to know ourselves and to know God. That is what I am now understanding. Although it can seem a fine line to walk (being in the world but not being of it), it is possible, and it is especially possible if we let Love lead the way, because the nature of Love is 'the nowness and enoughness of God', not the 'not present/never enoughness of the world' or 'the ego'.

In the Manual for Teachers, we are taught that a teacher of God is anyone who has recognized that his interests are not apart from someone else's, ie, a teacher is anyone who has seen another as himself. This is impossible to do if we are holding a grievance against that other, which is why we are encouraged in the continual practice of forgiveness. And which is why we need God's light also....to take with us on our journey into our shadows and to help us find our carefully disguised spiritual garbage cans full of our hidden grievances, shames, deceptions, and other bogey men we are sure we must never let anyone else see or know about. This is, of course exactly what we must (appropriately) do, as such exposure frees us from the arrogance of our ego.

Our ego wishes to be great in the eyes of the world, for that is the only world it knows. This is not 'greatness of being' however. Greatness of Being is actually selflessness. Selflessness is being the atonement personified. No grievances held, no self-serving striving, no doubts remaining, and nothing hidden. The Course says all religions, if properly interpreted, will take us here. This is good, as we absolutely do wish to be 'here', as this 'here' is where 'heaven' is. The 'if properly interpreted' caveat provides a very important key of discernment. Basically it is saying: any belief that does not bring us into the 'Nowness of Love' is not useful. The spiritual beliefs of the ego are rampant with such foolishness, which provides us with Great Drama, but none of God's Peace.

Better to look upon ourselves with 'the light within', and release whatever we find that is not 'of Love'. That is a celebration worth having with each other 0:-)

Namaste,

David