When you start to really go on this journey so much gets exposed
you feel confused, all turned around and out of your comfort zone.
There's a lot of ego interpretation of what's happening.
There is a loosening taking place in the mind but it is perceived and
interpreted by the ego as a very dark and frightening thing.
It’s just symbolic of the Divine Law that all that you give, you give to yourself.
Giving and receiving are the same. As you sow, so shall you reap.
We’ve heard about it as karma. It comes in different names.
That is the Divine Law and it’s pretty symbolic of what’s going on,
because When you come here, you are getting out of the familiar— out of your comfort zones.
As you start to expose things the emotions are raw.
The past association was to shut it off and go hide.
Just leave! If you visited a group and felt that
everyone was just too transparent and too open,
you would either leave or sit there and be polite until you got out the door
door thinking to yourself, I’m sure not going back there again!
Hour after hour, day after day, the mind is getting exposed
and there is no quick, easy escape hatch.. to change or just get away...
I have worked with a lot of people over the years
and it’s so clear, straight, and direct, but often times the reaction
for many goes something like—closer, closer, closer, YIPES! They vanish. They’re gone.
Thomas, who is here today, would come and go, come and go, come and go.
One time he was at the Peace House for a number of months
and then he left with just a little post-it-note, “Thank you.”
That is the fear of losing the self. What will I become if I continue on
with questioning, loosening, and exposing this preferred self?
Wow! I can’t even imagine where this is going to go
if I keep emptying and emptying. So it takes a lot.
That’s the thing with movies like The Secret—the big attraction is
to create your own universe, to create your own reality;
create the world the way you want it! That is associated with empowerment.
As you go deeper into spirituality you start to realize that
manifesting is not going to give you peace of mind
—but to the ego that is a tough pill to swallow.
The ego got into this whole thing with a little bit of improvement in mind.
The ego tells you there will be hard work
with some difficult times but things will improve.
Then you start to go deeper into this whole self-improvement idea
self- help, and all that, until at some point you realize
it isn’t about improving the self at all!!
This is about letting go of everything you have known or thought you knew.
That brings up a lot of terror; that means letting go of the familiar and the known.
Even misery seems better than the complete unknown!
The journey starts to feel more and more like there won’t be anything left;
you start to feel like the scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz
after the flying monkeys got a hold of him—
laying there on the road with the straw all over the place
In the movie it’s nice how symbolically the mighty companions
reassure him and stuff the straw back into the sleeves.
“It’s going to work out,” they tell him. But the terror is about the fear of loss.
It does take a lot of practice.
It can be helpful to get into your purpose, into your function.
But most people, when they start to hear about being
function, or purpose, they think, what is that?
You’re not telling me that I have to be like a rabbi or something like that?
No, but there is an emptying out, and then an allowing;
let your calling infuse you, and come through you.
Tap into the flow—into the current!
It seems to take a bit of practice so there is a gap
between the letting go and the kicking in of purpose, and that gap
can be quite frightening, disillusioning, and disorienting.
Friend: This relationship feels so infused with emotion and fire,
with raw feelings and a sense of threat.
It seems to wreak havoc and destruction.
If I can let it go, is it worthwhile to let it go? Or is there some value in it?
David: Well, it is the attraction to guilt.
We talk about how you’re wound into something, you get unwound from it.
Whether we’re talking about sexuality, or for some, a body image
and for others, it’s issues around food or a particular culture or climate etc.
It’s like an addiction to preferences, and then every topic
you talk about has that same preference underneath it that is being loosened.
For the ego, it feels like an attack. It’s a loss of something that was had,
that was valued, or was possessed and now is being taken away.
So progressively, over time, you might say the Holy Spirit
brings you deeper and deeper into purpose, and washes the mind
of the sense of need, the sense of lack, of grasping, trying to get something.
It just washes away, washes away as you go deeper with it.
It also seems like a loss of control.
The whole spiritual journey seems like you’re losing control
as you go further with it, as if you had control in the first place
and now it’s being taken away. In one sense, it's like the emotions
have to come up and there has to be that intensity,
otherwise the mind will just go back and forth between
seemingly wanting things, craving things versus being repulsed,
feeling, “Never again,” just wanting to wipe your hands clean of something,
just swinging back and forth, and back and forth.
So that’s what you’re in for with the journey.
It feels like it’s about communication, so on one hand
when the intensity is there and it seems unmanageable
or too raw, or too intense.
The one option seems to be ‘no more of this’,
just get rid of the partner, just end the thing.
Then the ego will come in really hard with that one
and will come back around with another voice which says,
“Oh you need not part entirely.” To still make this work,
you can retain areas of fantasy, retain areas of privacy,
you know, compromise. Either there is intensity which
seems to be a hatred and a repulsion, or the much more subtle compromise,
“Okay, I’m not even going to bring that topic up because
every time we do, then that happens. So I’m just going to keep it hidden.
I’m just going to have certain aspects of my life in my mind
which I will not expose.” And that's again part of the human condition
having secrets, things that are kept private, hidden,
and quite guarded, because the feeling is that it’s too charged.
If you come up with it, it will just rock the boat and
and we’ll crack the relationship open
so hence, a lot of compromise can seem to come in,
and that can take the form of what we call ‘people pleasing.’
There’s a part in the Course where Jesus is talking about
special relationship and handing it over to the Holy Spirit,
giving the relationship over and inviting the Holy Spirit in,
what comes after that, he says, “Those who have done this are appalled.”
” I think he uses the word ‘appalled’
What seems to come after this giving over of the relationship
to the Holy Spirit, or after inviting the Holy Spirit in is just
absolutely appalling what seems to come after that.
Because the Holy Spirit accepts the invitation
the purpose for the relationship has just been shifted.
And the form of the relationship does not fit the new goal.
The shift of the purpose is so strong that it seems to be
totally appalling. I think you’re going through a bit of that.
You’re starting to call upon, in your heart, a sense of true, deep peace,
of a sense of holiness even and everything unlike the peace,
and everything unlike the holiness is kind of like
a reaction or a revulsion to this call for the peace and the holiness.
It just seemed easier to compromise or hide,
and just pick your spots, but it feels almost unmanageable,
like, “Oh my gosh if I’m really going to start exposing
and not holding onto areas of fantasy, and privateness
and separateness, it just seems so full on.”
That is what you seem to go through.
I think everybody who goes on this journey faces a period
where it seems overwhelming, highly sensitized,
you feel like you want to escape.
I’ve heard people say, “Turn it back, or turn it off!
Get it back the way it was! I don’t know what I did,
what I invited, what I called upon, but stop it!”
It begins to dawn into your awareness that you
can’t really go back. There’s really nothing to go back to.