Class: Keep Breathing
Class summary: Answers 3 questions from Oratory subscribers: (1) I use conscious breathing to alleviate pain when it becomes too intense. Do I need to experience the pain or can I stay just beside but using some energy? (2) Who is my brother the course talks about? If I am the dreamer and the dream figure, then is my brother just another version of who I am dreaming that I am? Is my brother a reflection of how I see myself at that moment? As a body, how can I understand mind? (3) Jesus said Helen usually projected, whereas Bill repressed; besides repression and projection, are there any other large patterns like this? Is it ever helpful to use others’ ego patterns in such an analytical way to figure out your own? Also includes discussion on how to step back from our beliefs and seriousness, specialness, self-importance and arrogance. An overview of fragmentation and how the ego plays out. How we try and cover over the ego in the world, and the fruitlessness of this approach.
Time of class: 2:02:31
Bonnie performs Sonata No. 6, mvmt. 2 (Beethoven).
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November 9th, 2009 at 8:10 am
Hi Nina, I’ll try to explain a little better. The desolation theme really came up for me poignantly, experientially in the hammock and in my walks (and other times since moving up here). I’ve been speaking about this a lot — in the Beauty class and a couple others — because I’m seeing this (and the need for this awareness) over and over almost every day. By “this awareness”, I mean: We have to feel the emptiness of the ego in order to experience the joy of just how full we truly are.
We have to see the desolation (emptiness, hopelessness) of the ego thought system before we can give it up; the desolation of the desert before we can leave it. If we don’t see the desolation it is because we still think it can offer us something, and if we think that, we won’t fully go to the joy beyond it.
What happens, as we move forward in the process, is we still have our loves (music, sports, art, hiking etc.) but the difference is we now know where the joy is coming from. Not from the things we enjoy in the world, — it never came from the music, art, hiking, A Course in Miracles etc. — but from the love in our mind. So we still enjoy them, but lightly (i.e. we’re not attached to the form, know it’s coming from content and not the form itself, which we once believed).
One more note on desolation: We can see the desolation of the world and the ego thought system without being disconsolate. Of course, that’s how it is often experienced at first, but this gives way to pure joy at the recognition there is nothing here that we want, that would keep us from the arms of Love.
P.S. “Get into Heaven” was just using a figure of speech to express the journey from hope in the ego, to seeing the hopelessness of the ego, and getting back to the Truth beneath which we never left.
November 9th, 2009 at 9:18 am
Debbi: That’s some good woo. Now all I need to know, for this to be eligible to be canonized as True Miracle-Woo, when you were having these thoughts, were you:
1. Using a Chrest electric toothbrush?
2. Practicing a near flawless up and down, not side-to-side, motion?
3. And finally: Since the event, do you find you no longer need to floss?