Let’s prepare for lift-off!
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Back in the 1990’s, I used to teach workshops on the personal practice of nonviolence. I was drawn to that by studying the life and teachings of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi. They became such profound teachers to me and I became very dedicated to living a nonviolent life.
For me, living a nonviolent life meant examine my motivations for everything I said and did. EVERYTHING. It is such a deep and healing practice. As I was doing that practice I was studying to become a licensed spiritual counselor and prayer practitioner at the Agape International Spiritual Center. I was also studying and applying the Science of Mind teachings of Ernest Holmes.
It was that combination of spiritual practices and studies that made it possible for me, when I first picked up A Course in Miracles as I was preparing to graduate from Ministerial School, to understand ACIM right from the start. It made sense to me, with such a breathtaking clarity and perfection that it became my focus.
One of the things that I learned in my personal practice of nonviolence is that in our experience of life we’ll often conclude that our choices are bad, wrong, unhealthy, and self-destructive such as:
- Watching hours of television
- Drinking alcohol
- Over eating or eating things we believe are unhealthy
And many more such activities.
HOWEVER, what I feel crystal clear about is those activities are NOWHERE NEAR as self-destructive as the punishing thoughts we think as a result of making those choices.
The mean, manipulative, controlling and harsh things we say to ourselves about waking up with a hangover or “wasting” our time playing video games, watching TV, etc. are far more self-destructive than the activities themselves.
This is very helpful for us to be aware of.
And I believe that’s part of why we choose these self-destructive activities.
We’re actively triggering the unconscious guilt that ACIM talks about, and the accompanying shame in order to keep our vibration low.
Why would we, as spiritual students, work SO HARD to raise our vibration up only to turn around and bring it back down again with a truckload of shame?
In part, we don’t feel comfortable rising up, awakening, as much as we really would like to. It’s not familiar.
Another issue is – and these concerns are pretty universal with spiritual students – we often have a deep seated fear that if we rise up, if we become more compassionate, more loving, more high vibe, we’ll alienate our loved ones and leave them behind.
The thought of leaving our loved ones behind is enough to have us in a near-constant repetitive cycle of 2 steps forward and 1.9 steps backward.
We sabotage ourselves in a variety of ways in order to slow our spiritual growth so we don’t become incongruent with the folks who are most important to us – and with whom we’ve been reincarnating since the beginning.
What I’ve seen in my own life, and in the life of hundreds and hundreds of spiritual students in my Masterful Living Program and Finding Freedom From Fear program over the last 15 years is that we DO NOT leave folks behind. IN FACT, we become closer.
In actual experience, we become far more intimate and connected in our relationships with the same family and friends because of the spiritual healing we’re doing.
We have nothing to fear.
We can get out of our own way.
We can boldly and sweetly go where we’ve feared and the old patterns of pain and suffering actually do fall away much more quickly than we ever imagined.
It’s so important that we do this because it really truly is our life purpose.
And when we’re fulfilling our life purpose, we’re at Peace and we have Harmony with all of life.
Healing happens at the physical, emotional and mental levels.
We heal the circumstances of our lives, our finances and our relationships.
Willingness is the only requirement.
And it helps to have lots of people to remember to laugh with who are also dedicated to breaking through the self-sabotage false barrier so that we stop slowing ourselves down.
If you’d like to find a way to give up struggling with this kind of a pattern of rising up only to crash back down again with self-medication and other self-destructible choices, if you’d like to fast track the release of habits of guilt and shame, I’m offering my End My Self-Sabotage Challenge later this month.
If you’re a secret smoker, if you isolate and self-medicate with food or alcohol and then feel ashamed and filled with self-judgment; if you’re aware that you keep sabotaging yourself, please consider joining in this beautiful program with a group of like-minded souls who’re remembering to laugh and truly healing these pain patterns. Together, we can get it done!
LATEST PODCAST EPISODE: The most recent episode of my podcast’s topic is The Light You Bring. We can fast track ourselves to remembering the truth that is the key to our awakened mind. Everything in ACIM leads us to this awakening and we can step up the process by focusing on certain teachings.
