Sometimes you hear the the phrase,
Two steps forward, one step back.
And sometimes the spiritual journey seems like that.
Two steps forward, one step back.
Because if it's truly when you have that purpose and Inspiration,
And you really do tune in and go for it with your two steps forward,
We call it ego backlash, or sometimes ego whiplash.
The ego goes from suspicious to vicious the more loving you are.
So when you really tune in,
and make bold steps and strides in the direction of your purpose,
The ego will recoil, that part of your mind that's afraid of being undone.
It's a major backlash, or whiplash.
In one sense, that's not necessarily how it has to go,
But in many or most cases, that's the way that it seems to go.
And so once you start to experience that,
which I had that experience a lot in my journey, which was quite a long journey.
Every time you get that one step back, you learn to kind of just watch it.
Observe it, and not react or conclude something because of the one step back.
You just get better and better and better at that.
I remember years ago, before the course came into my life,
I remember I would do this with the universe...
I would go through my thoughts and my frustrations,
I would just pray, and then I would turn on the radio,
And I would just get the messages from the song on the radio.
So it was just as good as like the Course as an Oracle.
I remember one time I just was so discouraged about my latest ego backlash, viciousness
"I'm never going to get this, and it's throwing me back." You know, and this and this and this...
And I remember, this was back probably around 1980s, Billy Joel, The Stranger album
Words from this song, The Stranger --
Don't be afraid to try again. Everyone goes sour every now and then.
You know this is the kind of stuff I would get from the Holy Spirit
Back in those days, Before I was really into the course.
But I would flip it on and I'd be like, "Thank you."
You know, just having, "Don't be afraid to try again."
"Everyone goes sour, every now and then."
"Woohoo. You've done it. Why can't someone else?"
"You should know by now. You've been there yourself."
I'm like, "Okay. All right. Got it. It was-- a pep talk.
So, for me, it was like a burst of a little pick-up.
And I think that's what we have to do.
We have to open ourselves to those reflections and witnesses.
Because, for most, you have to deal with this kind of backlash thing that happens in the mind.
And the ego wants you to make some kind of conclusion.
Like, look at you. Look at you, you're not going anywhere.
You know, you're treading water.
And the one step back-- it will emphasize that-- as if you're two steps forward never happened.
You know, when you're in the one step back it just feels like it's a thousand steps back.
You might as well just be drowning and submerged under the water, because that's how it feels.
This just totally blocks the awareness of the miracles.
Even If you go through this and have lots of miracles,
it will just block out those lots of miracles and just make it really dark and grim and pessimistic.
And it's just the ego has a one-track mind. Like a broken record.
Just always trying to sabotage any sense of hope, any sense of progress.
Just always coming in there really, really hard.
So that's one of the things that, hopefully as you get deeper into your spiritual practice,
It's more of that light heartedness, that laughter we were talking about.
Where you can just start to watch it and not draw conclusions from it.
Like, oh here we go, okay. All right, thank you for sharing. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you for sharing, and then we're going to move on now.
We're not going to harbor these things.
We're not going to just go through and grind them through the grinder,
And grind them, and regrind them.
You know, you just have to let them come.
And it really helps also, with your relationships,
Because that's the reflection of your mind too.
That's really why you have these teaching learning partners,
-These mirrors, -These reflectors
Is not to harbor and hold on to the grievances,
And the snubs, we were calling him earlier, or the mistreatments and everything.
It's not at all what Jesus and the Holy Spirit are encouraging us to do.
I remember there's a part, that's just so poetic, in the text of the course,
Where Jesus says,
"Dream softly of your sinless brother."
Think of his kindnesses that he offered you, instead of the pain.
He's like, "Please..." He's pleading.
Dream... it's such a soft... Dream softly of your sinless brother.
What an answer to, "That's son of a gun, if I ever get my hands on...,"
And here comes, "Dream softly of your sinless brother."
You know, it's just like it's not even close to that "Grrrrr..."
Just grinding. I just want to rip somebody up and tear somebody up, and just grind it through the grinder.
It's like, no no- softly. I said. Softly.
You know, you could just see how light that is.
There's no way you could hardly even read that sentence with harshness.
Dream softly with your sinless brothers.
If you put the tone to the words, it's gentle. It's encouraging. It's lifting you.
It's just saying, "Come up here. Don't go down there. Just stay up here with me."
So that's what we practice.
And we need those reminders, and we need to remind ourselves.
And we need to be reminded, and we need to remind others.
It's all part of this, building that momentum up, to remember his kindnesses.
You know, instead of the pains, instead of the hurts.
It's like memory is selective. Just like perception is selective.
And we actually have a choice of which memories we're going to remember.
We're gonna remember the memories of love, or the memories of hurt, pain, grievances.
The choice is there.
It's just that with this linear trick of time, and this 'causation' thing,
It's like the ego just points out its targets, points out its enemies,
It just keeps replaying those characters over and over.
Sometimes the faces change. Sometimes the circumstances change.
You know, if you really step back,
You could start to to see this looping pattern
-- like a groundhog day of the same kind of thought patterns
-- Just play out over and over and over.
Just with little slight variations of characters names and changes,
To make it look just like it's happening fresh and new.
When it's the same old past just coming along, coming around again.
Like that song, 'If you're willing to play the game.' It'll be coming around again.
Coming around again.
So, we're just getting wise to these tricks and to this sense that,
Just beginning to open up ever so slightly to this awareness that,
Actually, oh my God, what you're telling me is that,
I have never been mistreated. Never. Not once.
That, every single time, in this lifetime or past life regressions or whatever,
Until the beginning of time,
Every single time I perceive myself unfairly treated, snubbed, backstabbed, whatever
Every single time, that was just a misperception.
It was still trying to cling to this grim death. It's like a funeral dirge.
Just a death wish, a funeral dirge.
Just trying to desperately cling to it and make it true.
And we're told over and over and over Your past is gone. It can touch you not.
Don't try to bring it with you anymore.
It's a time thing that you're stuck in. Your stuck in a loop.
You keep going back to this vault,
And bringing out all these wicked memories,
And pulling them over your clean fresh present moment
that you have here just to experience and bask in.
You could just bask in it forever if you wanted.
It would just take you away into eternity.
But you keep dragging, dragging, dragging,
Dragging these past memories, as if they're still real and true.
So we're just really getting practice.
When people come, when we are tempted to react,
When we're tempted to have a defense come up or become defensive in any way.
It's just past thoughts in our mind that are just spinning around there again,
Trying to get our attention.
So that's the incentive, is just for us to really, really firmly join together in this,
And say you know we're we are not going to allow ourselves to get tricked by this yet again.
Another facet of the diamond spinning around.
It's the same thing. We have to start to see it's the same trick.
And we don't really have to keep falling for it.
We're safe. We're actually very, very safe without having to fall for these defenses,
And get back into these spinning gyrations and everything, these dramas.
I always think of ...they talk about the Chinese curse "May you live in exciting times."
And I always used to look at that like, "That's a curse?" You know, it's such a positive word.
Exciting. You know, exciting. Exciting.
But that's the Chinese curse, "May you live in exciting times."
It's more don't get lured into the drama,
Don't get lured into a false sense of a sensationalism, excitement, really just another distraction.
I love that part in the course workbook where it says,
Some try to put by the sadness they feel with games that they play.
When Jesus says that of the Course and I said to him one time. "What games?"
"What games are you talking about?"
- Do you really want me to tell you? I said yes.
He just went on and on and on with the games and the distractor devices.
Like you could just go on for hours.
And then there's this and then there's this... - Well, that's life!
And then there's this, and then there's this...
All these tens and hundreds and thousands of games that are just generated,
As ways to put by the sadness, to really keep the sadness pushed out of awareness.
When, even if you look back in philosophy,
You can look back at all all the different philosophers, like Sartre and the existientialists.
I remember when I was in philosophy reading about the existentialists, and they were like, you know, life sucks.
You know-- They, each in their own way, they just said it.
Yeah, Nietzsche. You went on with all these exestentialists.
It was like, it's just grim. It's dark. It's bad. It's everything, it's this and this.
And it's interesting that they would have a whole branch of philosophers that would basically,
Once you take all the whipped cream and the icing and and all the ice cream and everything else off,
The glitz and 'Ooh la la!"
You just skim off the whole top thing.
Then you've got this black band of death.
Just a death wish, in every angle you look at it.
And it's no wonder there's made up so much whipped cream and banana splits and all kinds of things.