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Do I choose to be a victim or to be at peace?

The other night I suffered an attack of many feelings: anger, sadness, anxiety. I left the door to my room open. The male dog saw it, and I imagine he thought, aha, they never let me in that room. Let me enter and mark my territory, which is the only place that I am missing in this house.

When I came out to scold him, my son grabbed him, took him to my room, told him firmly “You don’t do that there,” and spanked him. When I saw that, I went crazy. I started screaming that I couldn’t deal with violence, that he should never do something like that in front of me again. I was so upset that I locked myself in my room to cry. After a while, I calmed down and began to analyze the situation.

These are the things I could have done:

  • See my son as an abuser. (Which I knew he wasn’t.)
  • Be angry with him.
  • Feel like a victim. Choose to be unhappy instead of choosing peace.

These are the things I did:

  • Breathe deeply to calm myself.
  • Recognize that there is nothing outside of me.
  • See my son as innocent.
  • Search within me to see what was activated in me.
  • Acknowledge that my reaction was exaggerated because it was just a pat.
  • Ask my Holy Spirit to help me see things differently.

After a while, the following memories came to mind:

  • When my two children were young, I spanked them on the legs when they misbehaved.
  • I learned that from my mother, and surely, she learned it from hers.
  • I felt great sadness and guilt.
  • I understood that I didn’t know better at that time, but thank God I have for a long time.
  • I asked my Holy Spirit to help me forgive myself and my mother.
  • I thought of Lesson 34 in A Course in Miracles that says “I could see peace instead of this.”
  • After this, I closed my eyes and was silent for a while, breathing deeply. After a while, I felt great peace and knew that the process was over.

In the morning, I spoke with my son and apologized for my ignorance when he was a child. His response was, “to forgive you again? I forgave you the first time you asked me a long time ago.

Obviously, the one who has to forgive me is me.

And with this story, I invite you to do this process every time an emotion, other than peace or love, arises. By doing so, I spared myself many days of anger and suffering and was at peace again.

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Are we there yet?

Sometimes I wish I could look through a hole at how my grandparents raised my dad. What did they demand of him, what things did they say to him, how did they punish him, etc.? For better or for worse, we all repeat what we learned. New parents don’t have an instruction manual on raising their children, so the customs are repeated.

When I started school, the lessons were easy for me. At that time, in Puerto Rico, which has the American system, if you scored from 90 to 100 you had A. My sister laughs and says that I would cry if I scored 98 on a test. I don’t remember crying, but I do remember that when I came with 98, my dad asked me why I hadn’t gotten 100.

That simple question led me to think that I had to be perfect to be loved or to have value. I pushed myself too hard throughout my life, which caused me a lot of stress. Other times, I didn’t try or do something for fear of failing.

It wasn’t until years later, when I started on this path of spiritual awakening, that I understood and forgave all of this. I could see that my dad wanted the best for me and that, although wrong, that was his way of trying to teach me. I know he did everything for love. Now it’s up to my children to evaluate my mistakes, forgive me and heal their inner selves.

I recently talked with a friend about this topic, and I realized that I still have internal layers, well hidden in the unconscious, about my need for perfection. I still have to heal those thoughts. Although much less, I still demand too much perfection of myself.

Awakening is a process. The Holy Spirit in us, who helps us wake up and forgive, leads us to see things in a way that doesn’t terrify us, gently but surely.

Our lesson is to learn to be alert at how we feel at all times because inner peace is the thermometer that tells us if we are on the right path. We still have a way to go to fully awaken.

Much success in your path of awakening

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I should forgive whom? Are you crazy?

That’s what I thought when someone told me to forgive someone who had hurt me. If you believe someone has hurt you maliciously, it’s impossible to forgive.

This is where the concept of forgiveness from A Course in Miracles comes in. As I have mentioned in other blogs, the Course teaches that everything you see outside is a projection of a thought that you have inside.

I always remember what one of my teachers said: “There is nothing out there; you are always talking to yourself.” And you will say, what do you mean? I see people and situations outside of me and react to them.

That is the concept you have to let go of to learn to forgive. I have already mentioned in other blogs that everything is energy. Energy is electromagnetic and draws energy of a similar vibration to itself. Those thoughts that you have in the unconscious are energy. If you think you are not worth enough, you will attract people and circumstances into your life that reflect that thought.

When you project what you think and feel and throw it to another person, it is an excellent opportunity that life gives you to see what you have hidden inside. It is much easier to see the straw in someone else’s eye than your own.

If you manage to change the way you see things and get out of the victim role, you begin to see any situation or person outside of yourself as your teacher, teaching you your inner thoughts. In that case, you will realize that by forgiving the other, you are forgiving yourself.

Forgiveness, then, can be summarized in 3 steps:

  1. Recognize that the problem is not outside of you. With this step, you realize that you don’t have to wait for the other to change for you to be happy or at peace. The one who has to change in their thoughts is you.
  2. Then comes the most challenging part, which is dealing with the feeling of guilt that comes from thinking that we have voluntarily separated from God. That guilt comes from the fear we feel when we think about the punishment that God will give us if he finds us. That is why we hide in the ego. But God is Love, and he only wants Love for us. That’s where the Holy Spirit comes in, that part of our mind that knows that separation never existed, except in our wrong mind.

In this second step, you say to the Holy Spirit in you, I no longer want to feel guilty.

  1. Here you surrender your feelings of fear and guilt to the Holy Spirit and say, help me to see things differently, and I assure you that It will.

Forgiveness is looking past an attack and seeing it as a request for help. There can’t be any exceptions. Neither the other person is guilty, nor are you. That is the vision of Christ.

The above is a process. It’s not pressing a button, and that’s it. The important thing is that you make it part of yourself so that you don’t miss opportunities for healing and forgiveness.

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Are you tired of suffering?

A Course in Miracles gives us a way to leave behind our dramas, which arise from being immersed in the ego’s thought system. I explained this system in a previous blog.

The way the Course gives us to stop suffering is the thought system of the Holy Spirit. I have already mentioned on many previous occasions that for the Course, there are only two emotions: love and fear and that when we are in fear, which is reflected in guilt, we are in the ego. On the contrary, when we are in love, we are with the Holy Spirit.

I will explain this with examples.

Imagine you’ve been trying to lose weight and haven’t lost a pound. You are walking down the street, and you meet a friend who tells you how fat you are. You can react in two ways, both of which arise from the ego’s thought system, or guilt which is one of the expressions of fear:

  • You get upset and tell her how ugly her clothes fit her. You answer like this because in your mind, you think you are fat. When you project it outside, and someone reflects it to you by telling you, you blame them for how you feel, and you attack back. This behavior is going to keep you in the ego feeling bad. Or,
  • You start to cry, feeling like a victim, and tell her she hurt you, that she is very cruel. Here you make her feel guilty, which is nothing more than a projection of the guilt you have inside for being cruel at another time. This behavior also keeps you in the ego feeling bad.

 

The Course says that there is another way to react, which is with the Holy Spirit. There are only two emotions, either you are in love or the ego. One excludes the other. You cannot be in both at the same time.

No one full of love attacks another person, for all they can see and feel is love. The Course teaches that a person is either giving love or asking for love. If you see someone acting from the ego and you immediately think that that person is not happy and that is the way he has to ask for love, you will feel compassion instead of anger. If you feel compassion, you will treat them with love. I always tell my granddaughter that the more unbearable or cruel a person is, the more they are suffering inside.

This way of looking at things is the thought system of the Holy Spirit.

Now I’m going to change the above scene:

  • You are walking, and when they call you fat, you immediately think, that person must feel terrible, and that is why they are unloving. Let me give them love.
  • You immediately ask the Holy Spirit what you must do to give them love. And when you feel the answer, that’s what you are going to do.
  • You will feel very happy and the other person too because they receive the love they need and don’t even know they needed.

That moment, where you manage to change the way you see things from ego to love, is the holy instant of the Course and results in forgiveness.

Although the process seems simple, it takes a long time to complete. We have so much guilt in the unconscious that to remove it all at the moment would be terrifying. That is why life presents us with many opportunities to do it little by little. So have a lot of patience and give love whenever the opportunity presents itself. You will be a lot happier.

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A Course in Miracles and the Holy Relationship

In the previous blog, I explained what a special relationship is. A special relationship becomes a holy relationship in what the Course calls the holy instant.

As Kenneth Wapnick explains in his Glossary-Index to A Course in Miracles, the holy instant is the interval of time in which we choose forgiveness instead of guilt..; it is an expression of our little willingness to live in the present…

As I mentioned in the blog of the special relationship, in this type of relationship, which is what we are used to living, as long as the other acts as we expect, we are happy. When it changes, we are unhappy and begin to blame them for our unhappiness.

When you learn to see things differently and understand the difference between being in the ego or the Holy Spirit, fear or love, you begin to see the relationship with other eyes and another purpose.

My thermometer to know whether or not I am in the ego is my inner peace. I learned to be very attentive to my feelings. As soon as I realize that I am not at peace, I stop. I admit that some thought of mine is taking peace away from me (I do not blame anyone). The next step I take is to hand over everything to the Holy Spirit, which is that part of me that knows it is connected to God.

When you are in a relationship, and you already know that in essence, we are all One, the other person is in your life to help you heal and raise your consciousness. Any situation that takes away your peace shows you the unconscious areas you have to heal.  In other words, each one is the mirror of the other’s unconscious.

In the holy relationship, you stop seeing the other person as someone who should fill your voids and insecurities. Both begin to see themselves as allies in their mutual paths of awakening.

Although situations will arise where one will draw out the other’s anger and unconscious fears, both recognize that this is the primary purpose of being together. They breathe deeply to return to peace, they hand it over to the Holy Spirit to help them see the situation from love and not from fear, and without a doubt, it will. Once forgiveness is given, which is ultimately to ourselves, since everything arises from our thoughts seen outside, they live another holy instant.

The holy relationship is the most glorious way to live.

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What are special relationships according to A Course in Miracles?

The Course mentions two types of relationships, special relationships, and holy relationships. In the next blog, I will explain holy relationships.

For the Course, all relationships involving the ego are special relationships. There are two types of special relationships, special hate relationships, and special love relationships.

In special hate relationships, we look for someone or something to hate. In this way, we do not have to look at the hatred we have towards ourselves. An example of these relationships is seen in politics. Those on one side hate Trump, and those on the other side hate Biden. This type of special relationship is easier to identify, although not so easy to understand what part of us we hate and are projecting outside.

The special love relationship is more deceptive. It is more difficult to recognize because it appears to be something that it is not. Just like the special hate relationship, we are trying to hide our hatred of ourselves in the special love relationship. The difference is that in love, it is done in a more subtle way.

As I explained in the previous blog, we all feel that something is missing to a greater or lesser degree. That scarcity principle is beneath special relationships. We think that something is missing. Immediately, the ego-mind says, I know how you can solve this. Look outside yourself for someone to fill your hole.

When you find someone who has the qualities that meet your needs, you grab onto that special someone. You fall in love, and everything is wonderful as long as that person gives you what you need. And if you have qualities that fill his needs, he falls in love with you. From the ego’s point of view, it is like a marriage made in heaven.

What the ego calls love is actually dependence. I depend on you to meet my needs, and I will make sure that you rely on me to fulfill yours. As long as I know everything is great.

When that person begins to have other interests or makes new friends at work, or in some way is no longer acting as you wish and no longer fits your expectations, problems begin.

No matter what, you want it to be like before. To achieve this, you can use different measures, usually without expressing how you feel directly. Maybe you act cold; you manipulate by saying something like “you are no longer the same as before. You don’t love me anymore”, or something similar.

If you can make your partner feel guilty enough to go back to acting like before, everything is fine again. If not, the fights begin until one of the two decides that he is not happy, and the relationship ends.

At the same time, you meet another person who “meets your needs and expectations” and begins another special relationship. If you pay close attention, you will realize that everything you did not heal inside with the first partner is repeated in the next. That’s because what I call “hunger and need come together.” Your partner and vice versa will activate everything you have in the unconscious to heal. But as always, if it is a special relationship, you are in denial and see it outside.

As long as you feel like a victim, that is going to be a vicious cycle. To get out of this cycle, you must start seeing things differently. In the next blog, I will explain how.

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A Course in Miracles and the Scarcity Principle

Since we thought that we had separated ourselves from God and created the ego, we always live looking for that something that completes us, without realizing that something, which is the only thing that would complete us, is God. According to the Course, this search comes from the scarcity principle, which is the belief that something is missing.

The something that you think you are lacking can be love, abundance, bliss, a sense of sufficiency, beauty, etc. When you feel that you are missing something, you think that nobody loves you, that there is something incomplete within you, that you are not enough, you feel alone.

The ego or wrong mind tells you that this is easily solved. What you have to do is look for it outside of yourself.

Some people look for it in food and overeat. Others drink and drink like a bottomless keg. Some people have to be buying the latest fashionable things even if they have their closet complete. What doesn’t occur to them is that they are doing that to fill a hole that they feel deep inside.

Take a good look at yourself with great honesty. What motivates you? What do you do to fill your life? How do you feel when you can’t? Do you take responsibility for your failures, or do you blame someone else?

In my case, it was the couple’s relationship. I had a feeling that I did not belong and that I was not enough. Unconsciously, I thought that having a partner would resolve this feeling. How wrong I was.

In the next blog, I will explain what special relationships are according to A Course in Miracles. You will see how when the Course talks about relationships, it doesn’t refer only to a couple’s relationship. Until next time.

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The defense and attack cycle

Kenneth Wapnick, in his book A Talk Given on a Course in Miracles, mentions another cycle that emerges from the ego game. I am referring to the cycle of defense and attack. Imagine that you were very hurtful to someone. That made you feel guilty, but since you don’t want to accept it, you take it into your unconscious and convince yourself that you did it because of something terrible that person did. In other words, you blame him. Since you were hurtful, you think that person will attack you in some way.

Consequently, you become defensive and attack him in the way you speak to him. The person, then, feels attacked, and to defend himself, he attacks you. This creates the cycle of defense and attack.

This cycle is so in this world we live in, the world of the ego, from interpersonal relationships to relationships between countries. That is why there are so many wars and so much violence.

Unfortunately, as long as people think that “the other” did or will do something to them, this cycle of defense and attack will continue. Nobody does anything to you. Your reaction comes from your interpretation of what you see outside of yourself. That is why there can be as many interpretations of a situation as there are people observing it.

Everything arises from your mind, from your perceptions acquired from your childhood, most of which are hidden in your unconscious. For those who, like me, believe in reincarnation, you already came with those perceptions to heal them in order to raise your consciousness.

If you see something outside of you that bothers you, ask yourself: In what form does what I am seeing outside of me reflect something I don’t want to see about myself?

Ask your Holy Spirit for guidance to help you see them. Notice that in the perfect moment for you, when you are ready to see it differently, the answer will come to you.

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Where does the ego’s thought system come from?

The ego’s thought system, which is the same as saying the wrong-mind, is the one that governs us in this life until we begin to wake up and realize that it only leads us to unhappiness.

It’s a very logical system, as logical as the thought system of the Holy Spirit, which I will comment on in another blog. However, both systems are mutually exclusive. Either we are using one or the other. They don’t mix.

As I mentioned in another blog, the Course says that at one point the Son of God (which is all of us) thought that he was separated from God. We can compare this thought of separation to original sin.

Do you remember when you were a kid doing something that you thought was terrible? What is the first thing you felt? I felt guilty and thought, now I’m going to be punished, and then I was afraid thinking about the possible punishment coming to me.

Well, imagine the fear the Son of God felt when he thought that he had separated from Him. Speaking in our language, he possibly thought, now God will take me to the depths of hell, but if He can’t find me, He can’t punish me.  

So he hid (or so he believed) in the physical world. Each time the son of God went deeper and deeper into physicality, until he reached a point when he thought he was far enough. However, the fear that God would find and punish him never left him. Thus, he changed his perception from a loving God to a vengeful God.

To protect ourselves from the feeling of such tremendous guilt, we invented a way of seeing things where we hide the guilt in the unconscious mind. Once there, we don’t remember it, and we begin to live as if it didn’t exist. That thought system is what the Course calls the ego thought system.

And what do we do when we follow that system? We deny and project. When we go to the ego for help (remember that the ego is a part of our mind), the ego tells us: “This is very easy, put it in your unconscious because you won’t remember that it’s there. But as that suppressed energy tries to come to the surface, when you see someone who reminds you of what you don’t want to accept within you, project it on that person and think that that person is the culprit and not you, and then, attack them for what they seemingly did”. This becomes a cycle of guilt and attack.

We have all done this. In the next blog, I will explain what we do after we blame the other. Meanwhile, you have time to think about all this.

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A Course in Miracles – the One-Mind and the split-mind

Kenneth Wapnick, widely regarded as the foremost teacher of A Course in Miracles, gave a talk, which later became a book, entitled A Talk on a Course in Miracles. I recommend that anyone interested in understanding the Course read this book. I want to summarize here some of the things he said.

Wapnick reminds us that the Course is written in two levels. The first level shows the difference between what the One-Mind and the split-mind are.

• The One-Mind level is where we remain united to God even though we have forgotten it. At this level, the body and the world are illusions, products of our separate minds or ego. They represent separation.

• The second level or split-mind relates to the world in which we think we live. It shows the differences between wrong-minded and right-minded. At this level, we consider our bodies and the world to be real. We see attack, separation, sin, and guilt.

Wapnick also mentioned that the Course speaks of three different thought systems: One-Mind, wrong-mind, and Right-Mind.

The following are brief explanations of the three thought systems:

• The One-Mindset is our true reality; it is the world of heaven. It’s the level we’ve never gone from, but we think we have. It has nothing to do with this world. It is our recognition of our unity with the Creator and with all of Creation. In heaven, there is no time or space. This level is rarely mentioned on the Course.

• The split-mind is the ego’s thought system. This system believes in sin, guilt, and fear. When the Course speaks of sin, it refers to our belief that we are separated from God, leading to fear and guilt. Wapnick says that the guilt the Course refers to is “the sum total of all the negative feelings, beliefs and experiences we have had about ourselves,” which are primarily unconscious.

• The Course tells us that as soon as the ego was created, God gave us the Holy Spirit, who, for the Course, is the part of our mind that knows that it is always connected to God. It is as if our mind is divided in two. One part, the Holy Spirit, knows that we have never separated from God. The other one, the ego, thinks that we have.

  • Right-mindedness is the thought system of the Holy Spirit, which leads us to forgive our guilt. In this system, we decide to live exclusively in the state of love, towards ourselves and others. We do this through forgiveness. Forgiveness does not lead to attacks or judgments because we begin to see what we previously identified as attack or judgment simply as the wrong way for the other person to say, “I feel lonely, and I need love.” This leads us to feel compassion, instead of anger.

In the following blogs, I will delve into some of the mechanisms of the Course to achieve forgiveness and live the experience of love.